


Half a Statement is Worse Than None

by Draskireis



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Soulmate AU, and poetry, but like careful about it, canon adjacent, dubious captaining, meddling Chowder, there's a roadtrip, these boys are idiots, words on skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-10-01 21:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17252111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draskireis/pseuds/Draskireis
Summary: William and Derek each must have met--seen and had a thought about, at a minimum--their soulmates on their trips to visit Samwell, as they both got the initial half of their soulmarks.  They both promptly decide to cover up their halfmarks.  After all, no one needed to know that Dex's soulmate thought he was dangerous, and Nursey shouldn't have to let it be known that some asshole thought he himself was unfair.There are opportunities to be missed in hiding.





	1. Chapter 1

****

**God damn him, that’s unfair**.  Nurse had felt something, earlier, on the upper edge of his tattoo.  But he’d been caught up in the excitement of the Taddy Tour and seeing Shitty again and the cute (jacked) Asian kid who enrolled while they were all standing there.  And the ( _frustrating?_ | _hot?_ ) toxically masculine ( ** _there_** _we go_ ) gingersnap.  It had been a lot.  So he hadn’t looked then.  It was only as he was getting back to his dorm and shrugging off his cardigan—to fend for itself in the floordrobe—that he noticed the words around his bicep.  In fucking Arial.  Fuck.  Also, _really?_

Nurse might have some opinions about fonts.

The first thing Nurse did upon realizing what had happened was to wrap his upper arm in an ace bandage.  He told himself that wasn’t worried about the half-mark’s content, since there was (hopefully) redemption in the undisplayed half.  Next, he flipped open his laptop and ordered some SoulDye on Google Express.  Nurse had been delighted that the service extended far enough out to reach Andover.  The driver arrived during study hall, which led to some disruption (but seniors—prefects—get away with rather a lot.  Especially if the faculty like them, and Nurse is nothing if not charming).

Once the SoulDye settled into his skin—an extension of his tattoo, a silver bar glittering on the cool brown of his skin—he felt better about things.  It was easier to affect distance and amusement when the danger of someone reading out the words on his arm to god and everyone vanished.  It was chill if his soulmate didn’t want him, too—but they had to be at least kinda an asshole to say he was in any way unfair.

Derek spent an unhealthy portion of the summer between graduating from Andover and starting Samwell brooding on the irony of the message marring his tattoo. The timing of its appearance limited his potential soulmate to only a pool of some fifteen hundred or so people (give or take everyone he passed while in transit through a large swath of Boston).

The running joke about the font was that it meant his soulmate was basic.  There was some consensus that tattoos attracted soulmarks, particularly arm bands (this may have factored into both his acquisition of the ink and convincing Darlene to give parental consent to the tattoo artist).  Independent of tattoos, arm marks meant—in theory, because once science had confirmed (through some extensive and awkwardly thorough experiments, which in turn led to the National Research Act of 1974) the soulmark phenomenon, it was deemed too sensitive for large scale study—that Nurse had a tactile soulmate.

He could handle that.

* * *

**That one’s dangerous**.  The words scrolled across William’s chest in the usual size like half a marquee.  He’d looked up the font—Garamond—which told him nothing.  He’d taken a picture of it in the bus station bathroom on the way back home—and then spent the entire ride googling soulmark theories on his phone.  There were several fora on the internet (beyond just reddit, which, well.) that interpreted soulmarks.  They mostly operated on secondary indicia—placement on the body, font, curling (if any).  They were neutral on any verbal content to the soulmark.  Garamond, according to three different sites, meant that his was a loyal soulmate—whose attention would be difficult to capture.

It was all terribly unscientific.

When he’d gotten home, William dropped his bags in the cellar room he once shared with Ryan.  His parents weren’t home, and none of the girls appeared to be, either.  Ryan was having some supper—must be a fend-for-yourself night.  He tried to pull Ryan aside to see if he could just get the better of his brothers to order some SoulDye on his behalf (regulations required one be 18 to purchase it one’s self—plus, Ryan might actually have the spending money to cover the first month of it.  William would have to budget, both for repaying Ryan and for future applications).  James had walked into the kitchen just as William had lifted his shirt to show the damning half-thought.

‘Your person likes bad boys, eh, Billy?’

‘We’ve been over this, James—it’s William.’

‘My littlest brother will always be Billy to me.  So you want to cover up your mark?  Not gonna even _fight_ to find your soulmate?’

‘It’s fighting I want to avoid, believe it or not.’

‘I believe it’ Ryan said.

‘The evidence doesn’t.’

William shrugged, unwilling to engage further.  He raised his eyebrows at Ryan, who nodded.  They left James in the kitchen, still sniping about how it might not be a bad thought (how some folks like a guy with some fight in him—or if it’s a platonic bond, it could be a thought about how _useful_ he’d be).  Once downstairs, Ryan tugged him into a squeezing hug, a comfort William could never quite bring himself to ask for.

‘I’ll get your first month for you.  You’ll pay me back for October, and then you’ll be eighteen yourself and able to buy your own SoulDye.  And—you know it’ll be alright, yeah?  I mean, you’ve seen my mark, and it still worked out pretty well.’

William snorted.  Once he’d had a look—he didn’t know it at the time—at his soulmate, Ryan’s left arm had read **They’re not your kids** for three days.  Ryan hate later gone grocery shopping again and had run into the same guy with the adorable little kids who seemed defensive and sad and harried.  The guy, Mark, had looked at him—seen the halfmark—and said ‘The other half’s bad.  And might have to change if we _are_ soulmates.”’

‘Pretty well for you, yeah.  It’s a good thing his kids turned out to like you.’

‘So what’re you afraid of?’

‘That he’ll hate me.  Or be afraid.  Or just think I’m some kind of goon.’

‘You’re thinking too much about the half you’ve got on you.  The rest is still out there.  I won’t try to persuade you not to cover it up, because other people can be assholes.  Just don’t internalize it, yeah?’

William shrugged—not like it was a new message.

‘Should probably tell Ma about where it came in, at least.  That’ll guarantee her support in any arguments about tuition and how we’re gonna find the money to get you educated.  It’ll all work out.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘But I can do my best to help it happen.’

‘Thanks, Ryan.’

‘That one’s dangerous (or could be, if I let him)’  
It’s funny, sometimes, how thoughts stick in memory.  
My usual response to intrusive questions  
Is either to evade or to tell a flat lie.  
So _of course_ I don’t remember my impressions  
Upon meeting you (and if you believe that… well).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with this delightful moodboard by the lovely [Denois](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Denois/)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fast forward through their Frog year with some highlights along the way (featuring various ancillary Poindexters).

The excitable Asian dude, Chris, became Chowder—and was as adorable and quick of wit off the ice as he was terrifying and quick of reflexes on it.  The gingersnap—Dex—turned out to be his defensive partner.  Dex was at least as tautly-wound as Nursey’s first impression had suggested.  The two of them worked well enough on the ice, but the Mainer rankled something in Nurse—Nursey, now—that he couldn’t explain.  Instead of investigating or introspecting, he took Dex’s bristling warnings as bait (as a challenge).

They fought—never physically, only once on the ice, and never again in practice after Jack broke it up.  Dex didn’t seem to understand that money was a fixable problem and less obvious than the literal color of Nursey’s skin (although Dex’s convenient and consistent abstentions from team outings costing more than fifteen bucks demonstrated at least a perceived issue).  Their worst fight, though, had been about Nursey hooking up with some dude at a kegster, and Nursey had no idea what to do with that—it’s not like he was really gonna chase down someone who thought he was unfair by existing or whatever (not that Dex would know; not that Nursey would tell him).  Chowder seemed close to giving up on refereeing his friends’ disputes, but soldiered on, relying heavily on Dex’s susceptibility to puppy-dog eyes.

Dex, Nursey noticed, also used SoulDye (as did several others—Jack had a small strip of black running perpendicular to his ribs; Lardo had a square of bronze on the back of her left hand that she usually let fade into near-legibility before she reapplied the strips; Ollie apparently had used it once upon a time, but that had stopped the year prior when he and Wicky got together.  Not that Nursey was keeping track or anything.  Not at all.).  It was pretty easy to spot in the locker room, with the prominent placement of the redaction-black bar covering his soulmark on his pasty, freckled chest.  No one brought it up—it was just _rude_ to do so—until late October, the week before family weekend.

Nursey occasionally wondered how SoulDye reacted with an individual’s skin to produce a particular—consistent—shade of covering.  He’d asked Darlene once, who—after some research—told him it must be some kind of trade secret, because that information wasn’t in the patent.

At any rate, Holster was pretty obviously irritated after practice that Tuesday afternoon.  Dex hadn’t been nearly as quick on the drop as he usually was in attempting a new play.  Probably related to the ink-dark circles under his eyes that had started forming before his first midterm a few weeks back.  As a result, Holster had lost an argument with Jack about its viability and was loudly pissy about it—never mind that the play was stupid, with or without Dex’s effort.

Holster wasn’t looking for a fight, necessarily, but he definitely wanted to make his displeasure known, even as most of the team had finished showering and was getting dressed to head out.  Dex was as slow off the ice as he had been on it, to a point where Nursey would have felt bad to chirp him about it.  Nursey didn’t pay attention to the salt Holster was spewing—he just wanted to get back to his dorm and do his readings for the next day’s classes.  He looked up to see Holster draped across Ransom, with his arms on top of the other d-man’s to display two identical rows of **I wonder what** and **he’s thinking right now** in a slab serif font—and looking pointedly at Dex.

‘ _What_ , Holster?’

‘It’s just.  I’m curious, bro.  Like, see how great it is to have a soulmate—to have _your_ soulmate.  And, like, you go on about money but SoulDye’s not fucking cheap—’

‘Patent holders gotta make their R&D money somehow Holtzy—’

‘And it seems like a petty thing to budget for, you know?  Even though you’re letting it fade some.  Seems to me like you’re holding yourself back from potential happiness like that, Dex.’

‘Although no one can be like us, Holtzy.’

‘True.  And I have a hard time imagining Dex cuddling with _anyone_.’

Normally, Nursey thought Holster was hilarious—but his salt was usually directed at a TV screen or fictitious characters.  Dex had gone very still, and his pallor was bloodless rather than just basic paleness.  Without saying a word, he stopped getting his stuff together for a shower and instead changed directly into his street clothes.  And then he stood, and he left the locker room.

The silence shook Nursey out of mere observation.

‘So Holster.  You gonna ask Jack that question?  Or Lardo?  Or Bitty?’

Holster interpreted his laconic tone—properly—as an attack rather than as a mild observation.  He rose from leaning on Ransom and drew himself up to his full height—puffing up like a defensive bird or something, Nursey thought.  He rolled his eyes at the blond giant—one of the few things that got better reactions from Holster than Dex.

‘He’s the only one to use SoulDye _and_ complain about how expensive everything is.  Like, he could just suck it up and let whatever horrible thought his soulmate had upon seeing him just show through?  Not like it means much without the other half—his other half.’

‘Yeah, how long did you have to live with your thought half-formed, bro?  Mine’s about unfairness—and how I myself am apparently unfair.  Imagine wearing that for most of a year—and not covering it, of inviting speculation.  Doesn’t sound so great, right?  Good job, too, getting in a dig at his fucking finances there while you were at it.  Way to kick him while he’s down.’

‘That’s _rich_ , coming from you Nursey.’

Nursey turned back from where he was about to step into the showers.

‘What, because my family is?  Just cuz it doesn’t affect me doesn’t mean I can’t learn about it by _talking_ to him.  Which I did.  So.’

Dex vanished from team social events for two full days.  He showed up to practice, ignored both Holster’s and Nursey’s existence, played exquisitely (as if out of spite), and left.  He did not respond to Nursey’s texts or the group chat.  Bitty deployed Chowder and his puppy-dog eyes to drag Dex to the Haus with the promise of pie and no further inquiry into his soulmark.  There was chocolate pie—French silk—and none for Holster.  Dex huddled up with Chowder, staying in the kitchen to socialize with the other Frogs even after the rest of the team retired to the living room. 

Dex helped Bitty with the dishes instead of joining them.

That weekend, Nursey wasn’t sure what he’d get up to after the game—there were approximately zero percent odds that either of his parents would show up, and negative odds that they’d do so together.  Darlene would have, and had called to wish him luck, but she had a trial starting the following Monday.  Said she wished she could be there, as it would certainly be much more enjoyable.  Once it was done, she'd find a time she could come up to watch a game and take him out to dinner.

They got out of the locker room and Nursey saw various families swooping in on their progeny.  Most of the Haus crew without visitors got adopted for the weekend—Bitty got swept up by the Zimmermanns, Ransom was unquestionably a part of Holster’s family, and Lardo had fucked off to somewhere with Shitty.  Chowder got dragged off, laughing and grinning, by his mom—apparently his sister’s college had the same weekend for parent’s weekend, so she got their dad.

Waiting in the back of the crowd of excited family was a tall, lanky white dude with reddish-brown hair and Dex’s golden-brown eyes in a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans.  He was leaning heavily on a shorter woman with hair like Florence Welch, who shared the man’s cheekbones and a nose that apparently belonged co-equally to the Poindexters.  Nursey assumed they were Dex’s siblings.  She wore a floral sundress that made Nursey feel cold just seeing her wear it.  They only stopped bickering when they caught sight of Dex.  Neither looked old enough to have a kid Dex’s age, so they _must_ be siblings.

Dex looked stunned to see them.

‘What, too good for a hug, baby brother mine?’

‘Fuck you, Kells.  For that, Ryan’s getting one but not you.’

‘Eh.  Just bring your friend over,’ she said with a smirking nod to Nursey, ‘I’ll give him what you’d have got.’

_Dangerous seems to run in the family._

‘Oh leave Nursey out of it.’

‘So _this_ is Nursey, then?’  Ryan smirked—a calculated expression, amusement without malice.

‘That’s me—I take it my reputation precedes me?'  One beat pause.  'What _is_ my reputation?’

‘I hate you all.  Your husband wouldn’t treat me like this, Ryan.’  _Husband?  Huh_.

‘Yeah, cuz he’s not related to you.’

‘You’re with us, Nursey, if you don’t have any other plans.  Come get your hug.’ 

This could be useful—interacting with his siblings might reveal things about Dex. 

Nursey followed Dex over and found himself picked up bodily by the sprightly young woman in a squeezing hug.  Jeannie had given hugs like that, back before she’d been dismissed (before the divorce; before the move to Queens).  Nursey took a moment to collect himself before noticing that Dex was still hugging his brother.  He stuck a hand out to the woman who’d just hugged him.

‘Derek Nurse.  Pleased to meet you.  You give excellent hugs.’

‘Kelly Poindexter, and I’ve heard about you.  Although William never mentioned your hugging prowess.’

‘He doesn’t seem like the sort of person one hugs, normally.  This is new.’

‘Yeah, well.  Don’t get used to it, Nurse.’

‘You'd still rather be the knife, William?’

Ryan released Dex, then pivoted to offer Nursey a hand to shake.  Ryan’s sleeve rode up a bit on his arm, allowing Nursey to spot letters (in Helvetica—the font of road signs and warnings): **CK OFF**.  He didn’t comment on it; he hoped it was a good soulmark.

‘Ryan, as you’ve probably gathered.  Good to meet you.  Seems like Billy doesn’t have any objection to your joining us?’

‘Only come if you wanna, Nursey.’

‘Oh, this I cannot miss.  I want you two to tell me all of his secrets.  Well, all of the embarrassing but not actually scarring secrets.’

‘I like this one, William.  We will work _well_ together.’

‘Oh god dammit.  Do me a favor, Ryan?  Toss me into traffic on the way to dinner?’

‘Then we’d be up to our necks in paperwork, _and_ the trip would have been a waste.’

‘After all, if you’re dead, we can’t guilt you over the gas money we burned to come all the way down here when you’re ungrateful about us visiting you.  And like we’d actually give him anything scarring.  My family against the world, remember?’

‘So… surprise!’

Fall continued and the weather turned brisk.  Chowder literally fell onto his soulmate one day.  Farmer was a good sport about being collateral damage to an SMH piggyback race.  She showed up for the end of practice the next day to ask Chowder if he frequently said ‘gosh’ instead of ‘god.’  A week later, the **Oh gosh, I** scrawled down her upper arm had filled out to **Oh gosh, I hope she’s okay**.  In comic sans—upbeat and happy-seeming even when serious like cancer warnings.  Chowder had **Why are hockey boys so heavy?** typed neatly across his stomach in courier.

The fines started pretty much immediately.

Nursey hooked up at one of the kegsters.  The guy—an eager halfback on the soccer team—had taken his time and made sure to mark Nursey up pretty thoroughly.  The team noticed immediately.  Upon learning that it was a hook-up and not his soulmate, Dex soured (and seemed like he was barely restraining himself from going off—progress in restraint, at least).  Nursey shrugged off his judgment—not like it mattered anyway.

Through all of that, though, they played some pretty good hockey.  Dex played a rougher game than Nursey was used to—than he’d been allowed to, at Andover.  They worked well together on the ice, communicating with a bare minimum of words.  It usually sufficed.  Except the one game where Dex had hauled off and knocked a forward down without obvious reason.  He refused to discuss it.

Dex, Nursey learned, took losses hard—not quite to the anxiety-ridden degree of their illustrious captain, but often in a more self-flagellating sort of way.  Nursey more than once overheard him muttering imprecations to himself (about himself?) on the bus back from games gone badly.  Something about hating how his soulmate probably hated him, even though he didn’t know who they were.  Kinda underscored the degree to which he _was_ , in fact, tightly spooled.

Toward the end of the fall, Nursey got sick.  It wasn’t as bad a cold as it could have been—he escaped the death that swept across campus just before finals—but it apparently benched Dex, and thereby caused grave personal offence.  Probably didn’t help that his phone had run out of battery and so he didn’t realize he’d gone incommunicado for fifty-odd hours.  Dex badgered his way into Nursey’s room and took care of him like an irate den mother or something.  It was… weird.  Almost nice, except that it was _Dex_ , whose caring instincts had nearly suffocated under layers of armor and masculinity.

Weirdly Nice Dex became more of a feature in Nursey’s life.  It was troublesome.

Like when he ran interference with Chowder when Nursey had forgotten his antidepressants on a roadie in January.  Like angrily making sure that Bitty got the help he needed to make his birthday cake.  Like how he was a principal of Nursey Patrol and often came to check up on him after the fact (like how he looked out for a surprising number of people while trying to be either very aggressive about it or as unobtrusive as possible).

As winter finally transitioned to thaw, Nursey decided he needed to take some of the edge off of the stress of playoffs.  He found a bi-weekly poetry night at a café near campus.  Every other Tuesday, as long as there wasn’t anything else mandatory, Nursey vanished from SMH’s awareness and spent several hours listening to poetry.  The café—a dressed up coffee shop with a lot more floor space than seemed standard—was called Java House, and had been started some time back by a woman who’d moved up to Samwell from inside the Beltway upon marrying an English prof.

Said English professor set up a poetry night at the café, and offered her students extra credit to bolster attendance—and to perform.  Also, presumably, to boost sales for her wife’s café.  It was at least slightly more roundabout exploitation than those professors who required students to buy the textbooks they published.  Plus, there was coffee.

Nursey hadn’t worked himself up to reading anything.  Yet.  He’d decided instead to keep the café in mind for when he took a poetry comp class and was inevitably encouraged (required) to perform.  He became a regular in the audience, though.  After he missed a team dinner, Bitty took him aside to ask if things were alright.  Afterward, Bitty—to the degree he could influence such things—made sure no formal team meals were ever scheduled on Tuesday nights.

Spring C was a magnificent gap in his memory, but between the Frogs and the Haus denizens, Nursey reconstructed the bulk of his antics.  He was relieved that he was not as dumb as Bitty had been (Nursey, for example, had lost no shoes), even if he’d apparently boozed harder.  Dex, at best half believing that Nursey didn’t get hung over, left him ibuprofen as well as water by his bedside.  Nursey was pretty sure they’d talked, too, about Shitty’s departure and how that was a Problem for him.

It was nice, that Dex had his back.

It was hard, though, when he wanted to have Dex’s without knowing how best to do it.  When they lost their last game, Dex had seemed likely to shatter—to fly apart into a million angry ginger-pieces.  When Nursey set his hand on Dex’s shoulder, he could feel his friend _trembling_.  He spent the next couple days stuck close to Dex, who seemed always on the verge of tears—that greatest sin against masculinity (and Nursey would know)—but never cried.

At the end of the year, Dex dragged Nursey along (it took _so_ much work to convince him.  Truly) to drop Chowder off at Logan the night before he left for Maine.  They had pizza and one last unintended Frog pile on the hood of Dex’s truck.  The conversation on the way back from the airport was probably their most chill interaction yet.

Nursey never had found someone whose soulmark matched his recollection of his first thought of them.  He didn’t worry about it.  Not seriously.  He still hooked up every so often—Dex’s approbation had softened as they’d become friends—and more after talking about their differing stances on relationships.  It was good.  It was enough.

* * *

William decided to spend a few days with Ryan and his family early on in the summer.  He’d let his SoulDye fade—no one would see him shirtless at the repair shop, and his family had all already seen his halfmark.  Would put a damper on swimming, but it was three solid months of not paying for SoulDye. 

James had snarked at him about it enough to hit a nerve and then dig at it.  Unable to convince his brother to lay off merely by asking, William mentioned that he’d been learning to cook, because it was cheaper than the dining halls and might be an in toward getting a room in the Haus (these were all, independent of each other, facts.  The lie was in the combination).  His Ma was delighted for a night off cooking, and volunteered James to go grocery shopping for him.

James was dumb enough to buy the Scotch bonnet pepper on the shopping list.

Once the chili was cooking, William chopped up the last jalapeno and the Scotch bonnet—with different knives—and washed his hands after he put the entirety of the latter into James’s bowl, just like he’d distributed the larger jalapeno across the rest of the family’s bowls of chili as garnish.  Kelly clocked what he was doing but seemed amused enough to let it play out.

James was less amused.

So William spent the rest of James’s visit at Ryan and Mark’s.

Theirs was a small house in Portland, two bedrooms upstairs, one (Elise’s) on the main floor, a bathroom and a half to share.  Danny had the under-stairs room (he was thrilled to be one up on Harry Potter: his cupboard had a _window_ ).  And a yard—the yard was very important.  It’s where the kids and the dogs played.  It was where William spent most of his off-shift hours.  He was fortunate that his niece and nephew liked him (he and Ryan sometimes joked that they weren’t yet old enough to know better).

The children in question were trying to get William to join them in the tall aboveground pool Ryan had designed and conned William into helping build shortly after he and Mark had gotten married.  Elise, 10, wearing her new one-piece swimsuit and lounging in a precocious pose on the pool’s extended rim, was trailing her fingers through the water and talking about how nice it was—and that Uncle William should join them.

William resisted until Danny, small for his age and shy with anyone but his parents and William, splashed around and shouted ‘Unca Billy—come help me backswim!’  He was shucking his shoes and socks before he’d fully processed his nephew’s call.  He delighted in Mark’s (and Ryan’s) kids and the uncomplicated adoration they bestowed on him. 

William was weak to being wanted.

Once he’d gotten home from Jim’s store—after another day of less-than-subtle hints about what _other_ jobs he might find for himself to do the next summer—William had changed into a t-shirt and swim trunks, because he knew he’d be suckered into the pool sooner or later.  He kept his t-shirt on, though, as he walked to the pool.  Danny cheered his approach; Elise smiled, but rolled her eyes (god help them all when she discovered sarcasm).

The water was cold, but not like the lung-stuttering chill of the Atlantic.  Danny shrieked happily and lurched at him, ignoring his sister’s complaints at getting splashed.  William pivoted out of the second-grader’s trajectory, poking him gently in the arm as he sloshed past.  Danny rebounded off the vinyl wall of the pool—directly into William, who made a show of staggering at the impact.

‘You’re getting so big, Danny!  So, what do you need my help with?’

‘Backswimming!’

‘He means backstroke, but he started insisting it was backswimming when I told him that.  It’s like he _wants_ to piss me off.’

Danny fidgeted at the edge of William’s peripheral vision, so he paused before answering Elise to lean over and scoop the small boy up onto his back and start romping around the pool.  Danny cheered and clapped and steered William by his ears.

‘Younger siblings’ll do that, Elise.  But there’s no particular harm in letting him call it that—we know what he means, right?’

‘But, Uncle William—words _mean_ things.’

William had yelled that at Nursey, he was pretty sure.  In an argument he was certain he'd lost.

‘Words mean what people use them to mean.  I have a friend who writes about trains as a way to talk about missing someone—who writes about flowers as a way to talk about love.  The words he uses are pretty complicated, but he’s good at it.’

‘Do you flowers him?’

William snorted.

‘Nope.  Not flowers and not love, either.  We argue a lot.  So, Danny—backswimming.  What needs work, and how can I help?’

‘You sound like Dad Ryan, Uncle William.’

Danny slid down William’s back, splashing into the water.

‘I have to ask questions, Elise, to know how best to help.  It’s like when we figure out what’s wrong with the computer together.  Anyway, Danny?’

‘Um.  It’s… hard to keep floating while I’m on my back and paddling?’

Danny demonstrated, floundering a bit as he kicked and flailed his arms.

‘That’s okay—it gets easier with practice.  I can hold you up as you swim around the edge of the pool.  Just keep your focus on holding in a big breath so you float—and also, if you can, on kicking and paddling.’

After a while of Danny swimming in circles with support and steering assistance, Elise splashed William’s back, drenching such of his t-shirt as had remained above water.

‘Why’re you wearing a t-shirt?  It’s all wet now.’

‘Well there.  You kinda helped that one, Elise.’

‘Water was soaking up it already.  Don’t avoid the question.’

God she was bossy— _assertive_ , William corrected his thought.  He and Shitty had continued exchanging their weekly article round-ups.  William lost sleep compiling his lists and reading Shitty’s, but it was worth it.  Shitty was weak against economic analyses by liberals.  And breathtakingly ignorant of how expensive it really was to be anything less than rich.

‘You’ve been wearing a shirt to swim all summer.  What _gives_?’

William shrugged.

‘So you don’t wanna talk about it.’

‘Not really.’

‘So it’s probably not a… cut or something.’

‘Nope.  Not injured.’  If it was a guessing game, then it’d be a matter of time.

‘Something you’re embarrassed about, then?’

William shrugged, hoping his unwilling blush blended in with his sunburn.

Danny kept kicking—William edged him a bit closer to Elise as they passed her in the circuit.  Child or no, she was edging close to things she knew he didn’t want to talk about.  It was nice to have at least _some_ family who didn’t know how awful his halfmark was, who couldn’t tease him about it.

‘Do you have a soulmark?’

‘Ayuh.’

‘What’s it say?’

‘Now you know why I have my shirt on, Elise.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a thought someone would have at you.’

‘That… isn’t what my halfmark says.’  He looked down at Danny, who had slowed in his kicking, probably to try to listen.  ‘You good for a sec?  How’d that feel?’

‘Good, but I’m gonna sit on the steps.’  Danny clearly knew a Talk was coming on.

Danny paddled over to the steps and sat, up to his shoulders in water, letting his head loll back onto the topmost step just below the rim of the pool.

‘Uncle Billy, what’d you mean by halfmark?  Did your soulmark not come in all the way?  Dad and Dad Ryan just talk about their soulmarks.’

‘Mark and my brother are pretty special.  The only had a couple days with their halfmarks before the other halves showed up.  Usually it takes longer, cuz most people don’t find your soul mate as quickly—Ryan had pretty specific instructions spelled out for him.’  The kids giggled at Dex skirting the words they weren’t supposed to say.  ‘And until you find your soulmate, you only have half of your soulmark—the rest fills in when you figure out what you are to each other.’

‘So you only have half a thought on you?  Is it under your shirt?  Is that why you don’t want to take it off?’

‘Yeah.  To all of those.’

‘Are you embarrassed?  It seems like a thing you’d be proud of—you have someone!’

‘Yeah, but I don’t know who.  And their first thought about me—at least, the part that’s _on me_ —is not so nice.’

‘If it’s only half, though, couldn’t the rest of it make it nice when you find them?’  Danny piped up from across the pool.

Danny was, of course, right.  _Of course_.  That was the worst part.  No point hoping, though: it was almost as useless as wishing.  Almost as painful.

‘It could.  It could also not.  I might be someone’s platonic mark, or a secondary.  Or just not a soulmate someone wants.  The words I wear seem like at least one of those.’  _The third one_ , he thought.  William kept his tone gently explanatory—Danny didn’t know, had done nothing wrong in asking—because a sharp word from Unca Billy was sometimes worse than a thorough reprimand from either of his parents.

‘Secondary?’  Of course that’s what Elise would pay attention to.  ‘People can have more than one soulmate?’

‘It’s not very common, but it happens.  I’m pretty sure someone on the team has more than one.’  _Thank-you, Shitty_ , William thought, _for preparing me for this moment_.  ‘Sometimes they’re both romantic.  Sometimes not.’  William stretched his arms along the rim of the pool, bending his legs slightly and leaning almost comfortably—there was no seat on that side of the pool, and he wanted to face them for this discussion. 

‘And people don’t always want their soulmates?  Unca William, why?  Don’t they always come in pairs?’

‘Bad things happen sometimes.  A person might find themselves paired with someone bad.  Someone might have gotten hurt so that no soulmate would be good for them.  Someone might decide that their soulmate just… isn’t good enough for them.’

The sound of a car pulling into the garage spared William any further explanation.  Danny shot up, hopped out of the pool, and darted toward the front of the house.  Elise got up slowly and asked, with all the casual cruelty of a child, ‘Which one of those are you afraid of, Uncle William?’ 

Since then, I’ve come to know you better, maybe well.  
It mattered less, though, once you started dating _him_ —  
He must have made a rather better impression  
Than I did, (that’s stuck in there with my memories).  
So back when we got asked, I told you both that lie.  
Hiding is much safer than answering questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is only technically Monday, but my day to follow is busy af, so making sure to get this posted now. Made very little forward progress on section 5, due to a week of practice at dying (stupid childborne plagues).


	3. Chapter 3

Nursey, for having passed his driving test at the end of the summer, drove back to Samwell in a Passat.  Dex griped about it (another round of ‘of course’ing), but they didn’t devolve into actual fighting.  Chowder took it as confirmation of the road trip he’d suggested on the way to Logan at the end of the prior year.  Nursey and Dex each set up their dorm rooms—both of them in Olin this year, if not on the same floor.  Chowder quipped that it’d be easier, that way, for Dex to be on Nursey patrol.

Pre-season was rough.  Ransom had Excel-driven expectations of everyone’s fitness levels as they should be, rather than as they were.  The first week was brutal; the second week was merely rough.  After the second practice, Nursey watched Tango clock Dex’s SoulDyed mark and hurry over to ask him some muffled questions.  They disappeared together shortly after.  A week into practices, Nursey noticed that Whiskey had, on his shoulder—in Impact; in _small caps_ — **call that kind of haircut**.  He managed to not snicker about it until he was out of the locker room.

Classes started in the midst of the second week of practice—the Frogs all shared classes with the others, although there weren’t any that all three were taking together.  Nursey and Chowder had Chinese together; Dex was taking more CS with Chowder; Nursey had convinced Dex that intro psych could be useful to study together.  Nursey was stoked about Rhyme and Meter Across Time and Culture.  Less so about Brit Lit II (Victorian Boogaloo).

The Tadpoles integrated themselves into Haus life even as Nursey and Dex got used to hanging out in Chowder’s room.  Everyone fielded questions from Tango, but Dex seemed to have more patience for it than most of the team—particularly Holster.  Whiskey, on the other hand, showed little interest in the Haus or socializing with the team except when summoned for pie or spending time with Tango.  Tango’s halfmark was about where Dex’s was, reading **lot of explanations**.

Shitty and Jack both came back to visit for the home opener.  They erupted when Bitty checked a forward on the other team, and came back to the locker room after the game.  Whiskey got Jack to sign a Falcs jersey—Tango’s, it seemed—and Shitty spent a full half hour regaling the Frogs (and Tango, who seemed in awe of, well, everyone.  To a greater degree than Chowder ever had) with horror stories of law school.

There was an eventful game of Never Have I Ever after the home opener kegster had died down some.  Bitty seemed happier than he had been in weeks, and Dex came out in order to explain some incongruous answers.  Nursey was more than a bit shocked.  And he was apparently dating some dude on the baseball team?  That was a revelation—Nursey had always sorta thought Dex was a monk, or possibly just ace and unwilling to discuss it.  Had always assumed that his soulmark was a platonic connection.  Well, it could still be.

There was a massive joint birthday kegster for Chowder and Dex’s birthdays.  Nursey tried to organize a surprise party, but Dex caught on.  He baked Chowder’s cake—were birthday cakes just his thing now?—even though Bitty refused to let him bake one for himself.  His cake involved a _lot_ of chocolate (and had booze-soaked raspberries on top.  Those were dope).  Bitty made a fondant shark to put on top of Chowder’s.  Louis, Dex’s boyfriend, was built, reserved with the team, and always touching Dex.  Just casual-like.  It didn’t bother Nursey at all.

Nursey might have been a bit too obvious in looking Louis over, as Dex smirked and settled back into the circle of his boyfriend’s brown arms.  Louis had pushed the sleeves of his raglan henley up past his elbows, but Nursey couldn’t see any hint of lettering. Louis’s halfmark must be otherwise covered.  Nursey wasn’t disappointed that he couldn’t see Dex’s first thought about the other boy.  He wasn’t.

After the home opener, though, tensions mounted in the Haus.  Something was up with Bitty—had _been_ up with Bitty—his baking diminished and he spent more time holed up in his room being secretive.  Lardo and the Captains seemed like they might know something, but were pointedly mute when asked (Lardo said she refused to speculate on what might or might not be the case.  Nursey suspected he was not the only one missing Shitty).  Bitty seemed to be constantly sleep deprived—like he was falling into Coral Reef mode without Holster to watch out for him.  When asked, though, he maintained—with an increasingly faux-cheery smile—that everything was great.  Never better.

Hockey suffered as a result of all of this tension.

Nursey spent time putting in work for Dibs—he’d started editing Lardo’s papers basically whenever he was at the Haus (he figured Dex was aiming for the attic, and wanted to give the cranky ginger space).  Otherwise, he started making the poetry slam night more of a priority.  Started reading his own work there.  Dex was spending a lot of time—and reasonably so, since they were dating—with his baseball player.

The tension in the Haus mounted through the fall. 

Finals were rough.  It didn’t help that Dex clammed up completely in psych during the module on soulmates.  He knew all the material cold, as if he’d either read ahead or looked up some of it on his own time at points prior.  Nursey resisted the temptation to ask about the fading black bar across Dex’s chest—was he spacing out his reapplications more than he had last year?  Was he letting it fade so Louis could confirm his first thought of Dex?

Nursey didn’t ask any of that, either.

The team did a Totally Non-Denominational Winter Surprise Gift Exchange (SOs and Platonic Life Partners Welcome).  Granted, the SOs and PLPs weren’t participating in the official gift exchange, but they were welcome to hang out and exchange incidental gifts.  Dex brought Louis, naturally (Dex had knit him a scarf with the White Sox logo incorporated into it, otherwise in Ravenclaw colors; Louis got Dex a short stack of fancy chocolate bars and a hand-drawn card that made the ginger blush scarlet).  Tango showed up with his arm around a _stacked_ dude about Bitty’s height, listening to the guy grumble about rules about facial hair and how he really wanted his goatee back.  Bitty had plastered a (palpably false) cheery smile over his irritable moping from earlier in the day and played the part of the perfect host.

Nursey had spent far more time worrying about his gift for Dex than seemed warranted, but _damn_ the grumpy Mainer was hard to shop for.  Dex worried enough about money that he pretended he didn’t need anything; he poured enough of himself into being useful to others that any gift aimed at his skills wouldn’t be about _him_ ; he’d be offended by anything that cost any reasonable amount of money.

That left very few options—in the end, Nursey cheated and tried to camouflage just how flagrantly he’d violated the budget rules.

Nursey maintained his chill in the face of an onslaught of highly fineable couples—fines had been suspended for the duration of the party, because their captains were benevolent (and self-interested).  So Chowder sat in Farmer’s lap, Ransom & Holster shared the armchair in a shifting tangle of legs and bodies, and Dex was leaning back on Louis’s legs while his boyfriend played with his hair.  Nursey was stuck on the couch between Louis and Farmer.  It was the first time since the Frog Birthday Bash that Nursey could remember being around when Louis was at the Haus—Dex never seemed to bring him over.

Bitty had brought chairs in from the kitchen for those who didn’t trust the couch, the floor, or any pillows that had been in contact with either.  Lardo had pulled hers up to the tree—which Nursey was pretty sure Jack’d had a hand in acquiring for the Haus?—and declared herself in charge of dishing out Totally-Not-Secret-Santa gifts.  This guaranteed she’d have better odds of guessing who’d gotten her present.

Nursey, just his luck, went first.  Someone had gotten him some pens—the Pilot ones he really liked, even though they exploded on planes—and a couple notebooks.  Pretty generic, if useful and specifically targeted.

‘Gimme a sec—this is delightful, but I have to see if there are _any_ clues about which of you got me this.’

Nursey looked at each of his teammates for a few seconds in turn.  Dex arched an eyebrow at him, but said nothing (plus, he knew that Dex had made something for Chowder, so).  No one else reacted.  So he busied himself with inspecting the books.

‘You have five minutes to guess, Nursey, or you take the forfeit.’

Conversation flowed around him for a few minutes—yelled, in the case of the captains praising Bitty’s holiday baking, or murmured, as with the couples on either side of him on the toxic couch.  Nursey ignored it—and any envy to which he would not admit even if pressed—in favor of inspecting the books.  The first page of each had been left blank for an eventual table of contents, and someone had copied into each notebook’s second page one of Nursey’s favorite poems.  One was in a tamed version Chowder’s scrawl; one was in Dex’s type-written precision; one was in handwriting he didn’t recognize.

‘Someone collaborated on this, because Banking Coal is in Dex’s handwriting, and I know that he did not get me these.’

‘Collaboration’s allowed, Nursey—you just forfeit if the _giftee_ can identify the gifter before receiving the gift.’  Lardo quoted, smirking, in a decent imitation of Shitty’s voice.

‘I’m gonna guess it was you, then, since you can coerce favors out of everyone, and I can’t remember who else I told about Mother Night.’

‘Nope.  Shirt off and run around the Haus.’

There was cheering—and Nursey would be lying if he said he didn’t put on a bit of a show in disrobing.  Then he booked it around the Haus (and miraculously didn’t slip on the snow and ice).  Whiskey was smirking when he got back inside, and gave a slight nod at Nursey’s inquiring eyebrow.  Huh—wonder what he’d promised Dex and Chowder in exchange.

Chowder legit squealed at the crocheted Shark Dex had… _made_ for him—and then boxed up in a series of wrapped boxes, which is probably what he’d spent his Sin Bin budget on.  (‘Sharkey’s got someone to care for now!’)  He lunged across Nursey to give Dex a hug, reducing the five people on or around the couch into a pile of limbs.  It took a few minutes for everyone to return to their prior positions.  Farmer chirped him for being a human puppy.  Dex had Louis push himself back into the couch so he could go back to sitting between Louis’s legs.

Holster correctly guessed Tango for the pitch pipe he got—so he could stand other people joining in when he sang.  Everyone knew who’d gotten Ransom both Gray’s Anatomy and a pirated DVD set of Grey’s Anatomy—Lardo vetoed the pun and coupliness fines, but sustained the over-budget fine.

Then Dex was opening the manila envelope Nursey had wrapped.  He was careful about it, methodical.  Once he’d opened the last flap that Nursey had taped down around the envelope’s opening, he produced a pocket knife from somewhere and slit the envelope’s flap at the crease, bypassing the rather thorough tape-job Nursey had applied to it.  Wrapping job expertly preserved for hypothetical later use, Dex extracted the prize: a laptop privacy screen (with a couple sheets of SoulDye strips hidden inside the packaging.  Hopefully Dex wouldn’t notice that until later, because that explosion would happen best without any audience).

Dex gave no sign that he’d noticed the missing and not-quite-precisely replaced staples.  Instead, he looked evaluatingly at the gift.  Looked around the room without lingering too long on any particular person.  Eventually settled, with his neck at a terrible angle, looking up over his shoulder at Nursey.

‘Nurse—did you get this for me so I wouldn’t yell at you about reading over my shoulder?’

‘Nah—I got it for you so you could stay up late working on roadies without worrying about whether or not the light spillage would keep me up.  Everyone benefits.’

Nursey pretended not to notice the sudden fierce squeeze Louis hugged Dex with.  Convinced himself that he wouldn’t think about it later.  Tried not to dial his chill up to match Bitty’s cheer.

Winter break did nothing to alleviate the tension in the Haus—and the alternating bouts of stress baking and listless procrastination on baking (on top of all matters scholastic).  Things came to a head on a weekend in January, when the upperclassmen were abruptly summoned to brunch one morning—where Jack and Shitty appeared as if it were perfectly normal for both of them to be around on a morning where neither of them had been around the night before.  Chowder gathered Nursey and Dex to the Haus while brunch went down—the cause of Bitty’s stresses became clear (and, hopefully resolved itself to some degree simply by revealing it) when he explained that he and Jack were dating.  Dex’s reaction to the whole thing was so calculatedly muted that Nursey really hoped it wasn’t, like, controlled hostility (which would make no damn sense, but it was still Nursey’s first thought).

After that revelation, Bitty was less evasive and more overtly happy.  Often to the point of fines, which Dex kept an awkwardly close track of.  Baked goods production saw a noticeable uptick.  Jack visited more, as did Shitty (Lardo might have had something to do with that, although she kept her soulmarks—plural now—under bronze).

Nursey’s high risk attempt at generosity caught up to him on the first roadie of the new year.  The Wellies had lost their evening game in overtime to Union of a(n un)lucky bounce.  Chowder was alternating between sadness at the loss and anger at the puck’s betrayal.  Nursey had just wanted to go home to ~~sulk~~ recuperate.

Instead, the bus carried the team south, toward the next afternoon’s game at Princeton.  Nursey spent the bus ride drifting, watching the roadside scenery pass—bare branches and snow blurred at highway speeds—and failing to stay awake (or, at least, to fall asleep without slumping over onto Poindexter).

They got to the motel a couple miles outside of Princeton proper; Lardo passed out room keys.  Dinner was a quiet affair, at least at the underclassmen’s end of the table.  Tango carried the conversation, for the most part, which had Whiskey offering terse explanations about his awkward second halfmark— **He looks uncomfortable** —and had Dex explaining dense CS concepts (with Chowder’s corrections) in what looked to an outsider like the Socratic Method.

After, the team dispersed to their rooms, either to do homework, mope, or sleep off the defeat.  Nursey opted for the last option, while Dex seemed intent on the first two.  Dex set himself up at the desk in their hotel room while Nursey ran through his before-bed routine.

‘Nursey?’ Dex called through the bathroom door.

‘Yeah?’

When no response was forthcoming, Nursey finished brushing his teeth before heading back out.  The sight that greeted him kept him from stepping into the room.  Dex sat at the desk with his laptop out at an angle that looked like it’d minimize light spillage with the new privacy screen on its display.  Nursey noticed the sheets of SoulDye strips Dex was holding and braced himself for an explosion.  He tried—and probably failed—to keep his face appropriately blasé.

‘Don’t do that.  With your face.  Please?  This is a big fucking deal, and I don’t want to fuck things up, but I kinda need to know what’s going on here for you to fucking _hide_ several hundred dollars’ worth of solution to a problem that doesn’t—’ Dex paused—snatched a fortifying breath—continued ‘that doesn’t affect you? — in a gift with a twenty-dollar limit.  In a gift that cost forty bucks to begin with.’

_How was he so aware of the costs of things?_

‘So.  Just, so we’re all aware of where we stand.  I mean, so I know where I stand here.  How angry are you on, like, a scale of one to Vesuvius?’

That elicited a snort, a small smile.  With that, Nursey found he could breathe again, could move.

‘A three or a four?  About the usual level on your ill-defined scale.  Mostly I’m confused?’

‘So a five, then.  Okay.’

Nursey settled, feeling vulnerable clad in just his boxer-briefs, onto the foot of his bed.  He could see Dex in his periphery, scrutinizing him; he couldn’t bring himself to look directly back.  He took a fortifying breath and then, just—launched in.

‘Okay.  First.  Don’t consider this pity.  Second, this isn’t trying to show off.  I just.  You’re goddamn hard to shop for, you know?’

‘…No?’

‘Well, you are.  Aside from chocolate, which Bitty has a pretty solid lock on supplying you and which Louis already had going for the Seasonal Gift Exchange, you cover your own few luxuries and vices.  You do your damnedest to not want things, and what you do tend to want is inherently beyond the price or scope of mere holiday gifts.  You don’t like poetry, and I can’t make anything else.  The screen seemed practical in ways you might appreciate.’

‘It let you make a joke to hide the thought you put into it,’ Dex bit back, rolling his eyes.

‘That transparent, am I?’

‘It’s like I know you or something.  Still doesn’t explain why you hid two months of SoulDye strips in there—and replaced the staples to camouflage it?’

‘You keep it so secret, so separate from all of us.’

‘Cuz it’s just my problem?’  Dex set the SoulDye on the desk, on the privacy screen’s wrapping sleeve.  He hugged himself with his other arm, right across where his mark was, covered by both a shirt and some clever chemistry.

‘Whenever you get questions on your mark, you vanish for _days_.’  Nursey worried at his bluntness—at what he was giving away.  Secrets were the most precious of gifts, and here he was just lobbing them around without even taking stock of their contents first.  _Shit_.  Nursey forced himself to keep his arms at his sides, to not hug himself like Dex was or to cover his own already-covered mark.  ‘You don’t fight, don’t even argue—you just _go_.  You used to reapply your cover as soon as it started fading, but now you wait until the letters are almost distinct blobs.’

‘So..?  What I’m taking from this is that you pay a lot of attention to my chest.’

‘I just seemed like you couldn’t—’

‘Couldn’t _what_?

Whiplash expression change.  Eight out of Vesuvius, then.  Seven out of Krakatoa, maybe.  Nursey pushed away an idle thought suggesting further research into volcanoes.  No other way forward than through, so Nursey tried to keep his tone gentle, steady without falling into pity.

‘Couldn’t afford what you needed to protect yourself from your words.’

Dex sagged in the desk chair—not quite exhaustion, not quite giving in.  A mix of sadness and shame and surprise lurked beneath the resignation on display.

‘I can’t repay you for this, Nurse.’

‘That, gingerlocks, is why it’s a gift.  No repayment required, expected, or even wanted.  I like you better when I don’t have to worry where you’ve fucked off to.  You leave behind a Dex-shaped hole in the social scene of the team, and frat bros abhor a vacuum at least as much as nature.’

Dex huffed.  A good sign.

‘That was a reach.  Even for you, Nursey.’

‘Made my point, didn’t’ I?’

‘Yeah.  I—thanks, bro.  I’ll try not to be too weird about it, but that’s all I can guarantee.  I just—everyone already thinks I’m a lot to deal with, so how much worse is it to know my soulmate took one look at me and decided I was no good?’

‘No good?  You know you’re only working from half a thought, right?  You haven’t got a full one?’

‘Being declared dangerous is a pretty clear signal, Nurse.  Um.  Can we—’

‘Shiny happy new change of topic?’  Nursey hoped the niggling feeling in the back of his mind at Dex’s comment didn’t show on his face.  There was something there, in the word “dangerous” used with Dex’s halfmark.

‘And maybe a hug?’ 

Huh.

‘C’mere, Dexington Bear.  D-man cuddling is clearly in order.  Find your chill, then get to work, bro.  Just lemme get my sleep pants on.’

Dex shook his head at the new nickname.

‘Not a bear, Nursey, no matter how many times you try to label me one.  No fur.’

‘I’m sure there exist hairless bears, both human and animal.’  They were safely back in chirping territory, it seemed.  He donned his pajama bottoms and flopped onto his bed.  Dex laughed when Nursey made grabby-hands at him.  Dex positioned himself as the little spoon and stayed until Nursey was asleep.

The next weekend had no Monday classes, and Bitty fell into some kind of fugue state in the kitchen.  Suddenly there were over a dozen quiches, and Dex had been recruited to whip successive bowls-full of eggs and milk and cheese.  No one wanted to ask what had gone wrong to induce the cooking spree, but Lardo texted Jack, who showed up to spend time with Bitty and to take away about half of the quiches.  Nursey took several that even a hockey team’s collective appetite couldn’t master to a writing group meeting.

Even after the fall’s tensions were resolved in a slew of comings-out and revelations about relationships, hockey didn’t improve much.  Nursey and Dex played well enough together, but well enough wasn’t cutting it.  No one mentioned Jack’s absence as any sort of explanation (besides, Whiskey was putting up numbers like Frog Jack apparently had back in the day).  Chowder worked out a routine where he allotted himself a certain amount of time to wallow and feel bad (preferably with a frog pile that occasionally also involved Farmer) before reverting to his normal cheer through force of will.

SMH held a pretty epic snowball fight during one of Jack’s visits.  Dex, it turned out, was a master strategist, having built some pretty stealthy snow-f0rtifications the moment he caught wind that it might be a necessary thing.  The Frogs took all comers for a full hour until Lardo appeared in their base through some terrifying act of managerial stealth, asked how things were going, and then casually walked out through the walls Dex had built.  From there, Ransom and Holster ensured it was a rout.  Dex was in high spirits, flushed and mouthy even in defeat.  Nursey suppressed a pang of envy at Louis, passing off the pained look by accusing Lardo of putting ice in her snowballs.

On Valentine’s Day, Dex made damn sure—even though it pissed Louis off, for some reason—that Nursey got a birthday cake again.  The same one as the year before, even.  Didn’t even consult Bitty on it.  Gave him a hug and fucked off to his date night.  Nursey declined to examine how that made him feel.  Even though it was readily apparent to Chowder, from how soft his chirping was for the rest of the night.  No one called him out for being obvious, at least.

* * *

Once Nursey’s birthday passed, February’s focus shifted to the need for a new manager.  Lardo had withdrawn into herself as her post-graduation plans failed to materialize (at least, from what she’d told Dex as he fixed the window in her room—somehow the lower sash had gone catawampus and was letting in a draft).  Nursey argued with Dex over the best way to advertise the opening.  His scattershot method of foisting flyers on so-called ‘managerial types’ (would he have seen Lardo as a ‘managerial type’ back in the day?  God, how were they going to _live_ without her next year?) was in no way better than displaying them in prominent places.  The flyers had all the necessary information on how to submit an application, and anyone looking out for such a job would see them if they were posted enough places.

To say that Dex was pleased that Lardo wanted his input on the manager interviews was an understatement.  He knew, on some level, that he was there to be intimidating (so Lardo could just focus on qualification, so Bitty could focus on being reassuring to some of the nervous ones and otherwise not touch the green couch, and so neither of them had to actually be the heavy if someone were overtly dickish.  Like the guy who seemed like he thought the team had stepped out of Animal House), but Dex still felt proud to have been asked to help out.

Ford’s obvious competence mollified Dex, despite her having been one of the victims of Nursey’s ‘targeted’ approach.  Once she explained what stage managing entailed, it was clear she had the cat-herding chops.  Her yelling was on point, too—Tango was guaranteed to get chirped to hell for that.  Ford clinched the position, though, by demonstrating her understanding of hockey bros after witnessing the outburst between Ransom and Holster.

Ford and Louis apparently shared a class—he vouched that she was good people one night when Dex was hanging out with him in the Haus.  It had been difficult to convince Louis that the hockey team was… hospitable to non-teammates?  A reasonable group of people?  It wasn’t terribly clear.  Between what Louis had witnessed while working in the library and the apparent non-hockey athletic rumor mill, he seemed to think the team was, at a minimum, weird.

They were cuddling on the couch.  Dex had begrudgingly prepared by depositing a twenty into the Sin Bin for safety in the Haus for Louis—and for Bitty or Lardo to later present him with an infraction list once Louis had gone (nevermind how the fee for subtlety would consume exactly the remainder of the twenty).  Bitty had announced that the lemon meringue pie—Louis’s favorite—was almost done.   Louis shifted closer to Dex, tilted his head close to Dex’s ear, and muttered ‘Pie?  Really, Will?’

‘Um… yeah?  He asked what your favorite kind was for a _reason_ , Louis.  It’s part friendliness and part tactical.  Also magically delicious.  Just roll with it.’

‘Well, if it’s _magically_ delicious…’  Louis’s smirk wasn’t so far from a leer.  It was the eyebrows.

‘Actual magic guaranteed, Mr. Agarwal,’ Bitty called from the kitchen.

‘With, like, sparkles and shit.’

Louis rolled his eyes and started to snicker.  Dex joined in, and he could hear Bitty huffing from the kitchen.

Once the pie appeared, so did Nursey and Chowder.  Nursey sprawled on the arm chair, legs over one arm and back wedged into one of the corners, wearing an expression too complicated for Dex to decipher.  Somehow the pie he brought with him remained safely on the plate.  Chowder went from standing to sitting cross-legged in one fluid motion, grinning cheekily.  Louis moaned around his pie in a way that went straight to Dex’s pants.

Time passed without conversation, stretching toward awkwardness once everyone had finished their pie, until Louis spoke up.

‘You hide your mark, too, Nurse?’

‘Yeah.  Mostly to ward off casual commentary.  The inherent awkwardness of being a black dude whose soulmate thinks he’s unfair.  That aside from how I got it—early—my senior year in boarding school—no need to reveal any kind of weakness in that setting.’  He shrugged, an elegant “what’re you gonna do?” in awkward contrast to the weird jerky pause in his comment.

 _Unfair?  Huh.  I can’t imagine why_ anyone _would think_ that _of Nursey_.

‘Hmmm.  Will’s only said he doesn’t like his mark.’

‘Yes, well, our Billiam is rather a closed book to most people—you’re special to have gotten into his skin.’  Nursey waggled his eyebrows, and Dex felt himself about to burst into flame.

‘Oh—we’re.  We’re not soulmates.  I don’t have a mark yet.’

‘Shit.  Um.  Sorry.  I—’ Nursey looked like he was going to wig out almost as completely as he had back in the fall when Dex had come out.

‘It’s _chill_ , Nursey.  Louis and I talked about this pretty early on.’

Nursey blinked, nodded.  Settled back into his sprawl.  Put his plate of pie with half a bite left onto the floor beside Chowder, who looked like he was keeping the score in his head.  Nurse resumed his complicated expression and fell silent again.  He made no further attempts to initiate conversation for the remainder of the afternoon.  For his part, Chowder went upstairs once he finished his pie and returned the plate to the kitchen.

Louis left at least as convinced of SMH’s weirdness as he’d been on arrival.

They held hands as they left the Haus, because Dex had paid for the privilege—and because he liked it.  He wished he’d realized that last year—it might have spared some fights with Nursey (and some of the team’s assumptions that he was a homophobe).

Chowder had, toward the end of February, forwarded Dex an e-mail from his mother with instructions that he—Dex—was to craft a resume, draft a cover letter, and send them both to the stated e-mail address.  Dex did so, leaning heavily on his coursework in CS and his work ethic as evinced by years of lobster fishing.  And recommendations from both Dave at Jim’s shop and Jim himself.  After an unexpectedly—suspiciously—swift hiring process, including a nerve-wracking phone interview, he found himself selected for a _paid_ dev ops internship in the Bay Area.

When Dex asked the goalie how his mother had known that Dex was looking for a decent summer job, Chowder had smiled and refused to divulge any details.  He did mention that his sister would be staying on campus in Minnesota for the summer and that he had been authorized by all involved parties to offer the hospitality of her room (which in turn meant that Dex would be able to take the job without fear of spending more on rent than he’d make at the internship).

As if to balance that out, everything else went to hell in March.  Despite the team’s general acceptance of the poor odds of making the playoffs—well, the captains were stressing about it, and no one was exactly _thrilled_ —they were all still working hard to finish on a positive note.  Classes were ramping up toward midterms and spring break.  With any luck, they’d be hearing about dibs soon.

Dex had no idea what Nursey had been doing to try to get dibs aside from occasionally covering Holster’s chores.  Maybe he was banking on his charm to carry the day for him.  It probably could.  Maybe he was working on the—probably valid—assumption that their captains believed in tradition, which might include the dibs-placement of D-men in the attic.  For his part, Dex had prepared a spreadsheet—know your audience—of the repairs he’d made to the Haus, the chores he’d taken over from each senior, and the time each contribution had taken.

All that ceased to matter when Dex overheard Ollie and Wicky talking about their plans for how they’d be rearranging the attic when they moved in.  Their surprise at Dex’s surprise—when you what!?—suggested it was old news to them, at least.  Early February.  The attic had been out of play since early February, and Ransom hadn’t bothered to _tell_ him.  Dick move.

Dex didn’t bother to revise his spreadsheet before rushing over to the Haus.

It was pointless to worry, Dex told himself.  Their captains had done as they saw fit for their room.  It was dibs, and it was an inherently arbitrary process.  And it was his own fault for assuming that it would be an ordered process.  Ransom, at least, was an order muppet, but even he couldn’t restrain Holster’s chaos-muppet ways all the time.  His own fault for having been _stupid_ enough to budget for the Haus’s lower room and board.  His own fault for—This, Dex scolded himself, was _not_ the time to have an anxiety spike.  He had _shit to do_.  Not that it really mattered to his anxiety.

Bitty was in the kitchen, with neatly stacked jars—empty, presumably already sterilized—and his vlog equipment set up like hadn’t happened in a while.  Dex waved at his back in passing and bounded up the stairs, skipping the one that felt springier than he really felt good about, and used the banister as an anchor for his momentum to carry him around into the hallway.

Nurse, naturally, was already in Lardo’s room.

‘So I booked it back here after I heard it from Ollie.  To, uh, check on how your thesis is progressing.  I’m surprised that Poin—ah.  And he shall appear.’

Nursey looked up from where he was leaning on the windowsill, wearing a really soft-looking sweater over a button-down, addressing Lardo.  The manager sat, in a bedraggled bathrobe over a tank and some shorts, on the under-bed armchair, scrutinizing something on her laptop.  She did not look up, but frowned at the screen instead, as if willing it to make sense.

‘Just cuz I’m white doesn’t make me the devil, Nursey.’  Try to keep it bantering, try to keep it civil.

‘Granted.  Just competition.  Well, a runner-up.’  Nursey shrugged, a full-body smirk.

‘Boys—’ There was a warning to Lardo’s tone, and an eye-roll.

Dex knew he had to say something before they shook hands and he lost out.

‘I had a spreadsheet for this, mostly because Ransom, so it’s kinda irrelevant now, but I can tally out for you how many hours I’ve spent working on this Haus and doing chores for each of you.  And, I know it doesn’t count, because it’s your decision and my need for the break on rent and food is immaterial to that, but—’

Nursey pushed off the windowsill and moved a couple steps forward to stand between him and Lardo, his eyes shuttered grey and wearing his full dealing-with-angry-strangers-mask.

‘For real, Dex?  Just gonna bring up a list of the chores you’ve done and the repairs you repeatedly claimed _weren’t_ for dibs?  And then, like, casually mention how much you need to live here?  I promise you, with the job _Chowder got you_ over the summer, you can handle not living here next year.  Maybe you’ll get Bitty’s dibs, since you’re his right-hand baker now.  We all want to live here, but there’s only so much space.’

‘Yeah, but you can live anywhere on campus—getting off the meal plan and paying Haus rent actually saves me—’

‘Oh my _Go-o-od!_  Poindexter!  You’re not the only guy at Samwell paying room and board.  You’re not even the only athletic scholarship on the team, I promise you.  If we go by need, it should go to—’

‘Hey, Bits.’  Lardo sounded surprisingly calm.  She’d probably just tuned them out.

Reasonable. 

Bitty stood in Lardo’s doorway in shorts and a button-down open over an undershirt with his hands on his hips.  Dex briefly wondered how many of Bitty’s physical mannerisms were specifically his mother’s, and how many were just generically Southern.  Then mentally fined himself for the thought.  He’d put it in the bin later.

‘What on _Earth_ are they bickering about?’

‘Bitty,’ Dex started, ‘please reason with—aghh!’

Nursey grabbed him by the fucking _ear_ and tried to pull him back so he was facing Nursey instead of Bitty. 

‘Bitty, Dex is being— _oof_.’  Dex instinctively reacted by throwing an elbow in an attempt to shrug him off, but Nursey had strong hands.

‘ **Stop it.** ’  Lardo was suddenly between them, pushing them apart.  Nursey gave one last pinch to his ear and let go.  ‘Ugh.  They’re arguing about my dibs.’

‘Your dibs?  I thought you were giving them to Ollie?  Or was that Wicky?’

‘I _was_ —but Rans and Holster had them _both_ locked down for the attic back in February and never told me.  Four-way dibs handshake and all.  _These_ two **dummies** found out from Ollie this morning, and if they don’t shut up I’m giving my dibs to _Tango_.’

Dex was trying to listen to Nursey and Lardo, both at once.  Nursey was explaining that he’d been banking on Dex getting the attic—which hurt, like did Nursey not actually _want_ to live with him?

‘You were _banking_!?’  Nursey had some gall, bringing money into this.  Especially with how kind he’d seemed at Christmas.  If this was real, then what was that?

‘Enough.  Full team lottery.  Only fair.’

‘Sorry, but— _how_ does Nursey deserve dibs?’  Even through his anger, he clocked the looks he got from Lardo and Nursey.  But, he’d lost out on dibs and Nursey apparently wasn’t really his friend, so fuck it.  Might as well burn bridges completely—live up to his reputation of fire.

‘Dex.’  Lardo’s tone was almost placating—as one might a small child.  Which, fair.  ‘I know you fixed a ton of stuff in the Haus this year.  But Nursey proofread every art criticism response I turned in this semester.  He practically wrote my senior thesis.’

A personal approach.  Subtle and well targeted.  And he apparently hadn’t been going for the attic after all.  All on point for Nursey.

Dex tuned back in just as Nursey deadpanned ‘That last part’s fake.’

Bitty cleared his throat and proclaimed ‘Lady and gentlemen—this might necessitate a dibs flip.’

‘Oh shit, good thinking Bitty!’

‘I mean, it’s what the bylaws are _for!_   In lieu of a lottery,’ Bitty quoted, as if from memory, something Dex had no recollection of seeing behind the water heater, ‘a coin flip can decide the transfer of dibs between multiple parties.  Now if you two shake your hands, we can get this over with.  Fair and square.  One flip.  Will?  Derek?’

‘Huh.  Poindexter.’  Nursey held out his hand, still glaring.

‘Nurse.’  Derek glared back, taking his hand in a firm, brief shake.

Lardo got a quarter.

‘Swawesome.’

The coin arced through the air, spinning madly.  Hit the ground, bounced.  Spun on an edge, never quite settling on a side.  Rolled into a seam between floorboards, where it wedged itself—stuck, edge-up.

‘Wow.’  Lardo’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Chill!’

‘This cannot be happening.’ Dex muttered

‘Well!  What **are** the odds!’ Bitty said, with what to Dex sounded like forced brightness.  ‘Solomon himself could not have thought of a solution more wise.’

Which, what?

‘Looks like y’all are _sharing_ this room.’

Dex found himself moving to pick up the coin.  As if it hadn’t already doomed him to live with Derek stop-hitting-yourself-Dex Nurse for two years unless one or the other of them moved out or died.  Dying was an option, right?  He held the quarter up to Lardo.

‘Re-flip!  Check the lease!’  If Nursey had been willing to burn bridges before, there was no way he’d survive living with the guy.  ‘Have Shitty reinterpret the bylaws—I can’t.’

‘ **No reflips.** Seriously?  Who ever heard of a re-dib-flip?’

‘Come _on_ , Poindexter.’  Nursey’s hand was light on Dex’s back, warm.  ‘It’s a pretty big room.  And,’ he said, with so little snark it seemed for a moment like a peace offering, ‘the rent’s even lower this way.’

He wanted to take it, but his mouth was already working, riffing out loud on Bitty’s comment about Solomon.

‘Is—this is a test?  To see who really wants dibs, right?  To see who respects the Haus most?  Right?’

Lardo ignored him.  Bitty’d maybe left the room already.  Nursey’s voice hardened.

‘Poindexter!  Face it, you’re gonna move out by August.  September.  Tops.’

Dex had fucked up the peace offering, if that was how Nursey really felt.  Or maybe it hadn’t been one at all.  He zoned out, staring at the treacherous quarter, as Nursey crowed to Chowder that they’d all be living together, at least for as long as it took Dex to get new housing sorted.  Lardo kicked him out some time later, having apparently gone about a full afternoon and evening with Dex just… there.  Fuck.

Dex was rigidly civil in practice—their last practice, as it turned out, before the season ended.  He’d already tried once to apologize to Nursey—who’d brushed him off, which was probably reasonable—by the time Chowder suggested he do so.  He didn’t ask if Chowder thought he was owed an apology.  If the bridge was burnt, he shouldn’t expect another olive branch.  Distance and manners might at least save their defensive partnership.

William went home for the first week of spring break.  Hoped the drama would die down with some separation and some time to breathe.  Also got to see Ryan and his family, which was the best.  Jim didn’t have any room for him to take even one shift at the shop, which William had rather expected.  It wasn’t ideal, and if he did want to save enough that he could move into a dorm if—when—Nursey proved an impossible roommate, he’d probably have to skip a month or two of SoulDye by the end of the school year.

At least the season was over, and he could get away with just keeping a shirt on.

Dex got back to Samwell in time to help plan Ransom and Lardo’s birthday Keagster.  There also was, because reasons and Bitty, a metric fuckload of jam to be moved.  Ransom missed out on some of his own birthday celebrations because of what really, really looked like a celebrity crush on Tater, who seamlessly integrated himself into frat life for a day.  Dex was still hungover the next day around noon when Louis pounded on his door.

Louis had just gotten back onto campus—he still had his suitcase with him.  He’d shown up to Dex’s room all out of breath, like he’d run across campus, and said that he was really, really sorry.  He’d lifted up his arm to show words in a scripted font along his bicep— **It’s too bad; he looks good with that redhead**.  It looked like a complete mark, too, which meant the end even more than the words did. 

Shelly had apparently been Louis’s partner in the student service week of spring break, and had seen Dex give Louis a cheek kiss goodbye before leaving to drive home.  They’d spent several days working together, Louis told him, and she’d been the first one to see the halfmark that had formed the first afternoon they’d spent getting to know one another and learning how to properly use a hammer.

Dex did not ask what Louis’s first thought of Shelly was.  Just said ‘Okay.  Guess that’s it, then?’ 

Louis nodded.  Dex suggested Louis leave.

I have to admit that I still have some questions,  
Because last year proved I _didn’t_ know you so well  
(That exchange toward the end hurt bad, not gonna lie—  
I’ll leave the rest, since it might be best to leave him  
And all the hurt _he_ caused behind in memory)  
Still, I think there remain a few misimpressions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey. It's a dibs flip. Also, the Louis I wrote prior to Waffle-Louis. Very nearly done with Chapter 5, which... is almost a third of the current total word count? It's a problem. Partway in to Chapter 6, and have the gist of 7 & 8 outlined, so... keeping biweekly for a moment.


	4. Chapter 4

The week between Dex’s meltdown and spring break was long.  Dex tried to apologize, but Nursey hadn’t been ready to deal with that shit yet.  He felt like he first had to figure out why Dex had gone so far off the rails before he could deal with his angry gingerness.  Dex—correctly—interpreted his terseness as a signal to fuck off, and did so with surprising thoroughness, except for the Bitty-says-it’s-mandatory playoffs watching in the Haus.  Because _everyone_ had to be there to support Jack.  Dex yelled at the TV along with everyone else during the game, occasionally looking ready to fight a ref or a player and nevermind that the image on the TV wasn’t the offending individual.  And then he left once the game was over, with a tupperware container full of pie.

Dex hadn’t said goodbye to Nursey before he left for break.  Didn’t even announce it on the group chat.  Nursey was pretty sure Chowder had seen him, and probably Bitty, too.  No one mentioned it to him, though.  Not that it should matter.  Nursey told himself he was only too glad to reciprocate Dex’s radio silence.

Darlene was around during break, but she worked late even while home so he only caught the occasional dinner with her.  Those dinners were good, though, and his mother listened as he bitched about the stupid white boy and his stupid presumptions.  He didn’t tell her about how all the fight had gone out of Dex the moment he suggested that Dex would be the one to move out.  Or that he didn’t understand what had happened to their friendship.  Or that he cared.  Darlene, kindly, didn’t press.

After dinner one night, sitting in the reading chair in his room, Nursey texted Chowder.

**Me:** Yo.

**Jaws:** Hi Nursey!!!

**Me:** How’s break?

**Jaws:** Goooood!  How’re _youuuuuu_?

**Me:** Definitely not moping.  Which.  I shouldn’t be moping.  Cuz why should I be sad that Poindexter’s just another white dude?

Response dots appeared.  Disappeared.  Reappeared and kept going for some time.  Disappeared again.

Then, a full minute later, Nursey’s phone rang.

Nursey picked up, and Chowder skipped the preamble.

‘So we’re talking about this?’  Not FTG, but definitely focused-Chowder rather than bubbly-Chowder.

‘What’s there to talk about, C?  I thought we were friends, but apparently the white guy’s sense of entitlement means he’s free to discount what I do and demand an _accounting_ of how I could **possibly** deserve dibs.’  So much for chill.

‘Two things, Nursey, before you really get on a roll.  One—we know Dex is hella bad at words.  Like, remember how we thought he was a homophobe who tolerated Bitty for his pie after the one-in-four conversation?  When he was trying to not be excited about it?’

‘So you think this is all _just a big misunderstanding_ and that Dex did no wrong?’  Nursey drew his knees into his chest so he was curled up in the giant wingback chair.

‘You should be able to hear me rolling my eyes at you, Nursey.  I’m not picking sides here, cuz you both have some points and you both fucked up.’

Nursey took a breath, but Chowder wasn’t done.

‘Not yet.  Still talking.  I already chewed Dex out for how he phrased shit before break—after he’d tried apologizing to you, incidentally.  I didn’t put him up to that.  And now for the second thing—I only know about you helping Lardo because I share a wall and a bathroom with her.  So it’s entirely possible he sounded racist, and he even mentioned he’d probably fucked up there, which means he almost certainly did.  I still believe him, having heard from both of you about it, that it was intended as a content neutral question _because he didn’t know_.  Also, for what it’s worth, Dex thinks you devalued him entirely, too.’

Despite sounding like an offhand comment, Nursey was pretty sure that last was a deliberate piece of information-dropping.

‘Wait—what did _I_ do wrong?  Nothing I said was untrue.’

‘Yeah, you spoke only truth, Nursey, and Dex just asked some questions.  I’m not saying that Dex behaved well.  He reacted consistently with what we know of him if you consider the situation and what information he had—and didn’t have.  And from both of your descriptions, you reacted consistently with the information _you_ had, even though it was a differing information-set.  Congratulations to both of you on playing to each other’s vulnerable points.  And now each of you thinks that the other never really considered you a friend, which is dumb and frustrating.’

‘So what does the white boy think happened?’

‘We both know he’s white.  Just call him Dex.  Dex thinks that his friend—that would be you, if you need help keeping track—didn’t want to live with him from the start and planned his—your—dibs strategy accordingly.  That you talked over and ignored his concerns—I did not get him that job and neither did my mom, his only advantage was being the first to submit.  And then decided that, since you didn’t win enough, you’d just drive him from the room and celebrate living in the Haus with me.’

To keep from tugging at his hair, Derek ran his fingers back and forth over the chair’s textured upholstery.

‘So he thinks I’m the one who started the bridge burning.’

‘Funny.’  Chowder’s tone held no trace of humor.  ‘He used that metaphor, too.’

Nursey wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  Silence stretched, like it did when Chowder was making him think about things in person.  Then, just as Nursey was about to say something, Chowder started in again with a sigh.

‘Now I’m going to repeat something he told me not to, which is breaking his trust and hella shitty, but it might help.  So it better fucking be worth it.  He asked me if I knew about the secret sa—the toooootally non-denominational winter holiday gift exchange.  I said I’d double-checked the type of screen protector, but he somehow took that as a no.  Which means there’s something more involved in that, and I’m _not_ touching it.  You two were friends before this happened.  You can still be friends.  I don’t want either of you to mess this up, even though you’re both on track to.  So.  Anything else you wanna add?’

‘Nothing apparently useful.’

‘Swawesome.  Means I don’t have to address the other elephant in the room.  Now I’m gonna go help my sister run lines for Bat Boy.  I’ll talk to you later.’

Dex, after spring break, was opaque to Nursey.  He held himself rigid and still, as if confining himself to a smaller space than his frame occupied—it reminded Nursey of lower-mid Nurse after Shitty had graduated from Andover.  Chowder was gentle with him, offering him a sympathy he did not extend to Nursey.  When pressed on it, he only mentioned extenuating circumstances, and that Nursey could ask Dex about it himself if he wanted more information.  Nursey found he was not inclined to do so.

Instead, Nursey asked Lardo, who mentioned that Louis had found his soulmate over break, and had completed his soulmark before informing Dex of the development.  She glared at him when he responded with a laconic ‘well, that’s tragic.’  Nursey totally did not proceed to leave the Haus to pout alone in his room, where everyone present would support him.

The Keagster—in addition to being a celebration of two of SMH’s last birthdays on campus—was a close-out to spring break and a bit of pre-commiseration over finals.  Farmer put herself on Nursey Patrol despite both Nursey’s protests at its continued existence and Farmer’s not actually being on the team or a member of the Haus—except honorarily.

Dex, Nursey noticed in his attention's periphery, went as hard at drinking that night as he’d gone at burning bridges.

Nursey ignored that trainwreck and submerged himself in the dancing throng.  Ransom’s choice in music pretty strongly suggested getting laid.  There was a wide selection of seemingly interested options, many of them dancing up on him with suggestive abandon.  It was frustrating, then, that Nursey didn’t actually feel like pulling.

Instead he danced and drank and sang badly along with as many of the songs as he knew.  Farmer seemed intent on being his watcher for the night, so he drank whatever she handed him—water or Gatorade—without question.  Like he’d done with Dex before the damn coin flip.

Farmer wasn’t nearly as fun to whine at, though.  She reacted less to his goads.  Another downside was that she was pretty obviously staying over at the Haus, so he wasn’t gonna have anyone to lean on and talk about the stars to.  At.

When Nursey told her this, she snorted and said he wasn’t leaving, either.

When it was apparently time to crash, Caitlin started to haul him up the stairs with a combination of chirps, encouragement, and brute force.  They got as far as the landing at the top before a terrible noise came from Chowder’s room, like a tortured kitten or an air raid siren.  Caitlin punched his shoulder—hard—when he asked if Chowder had a weather alert system in there.  Even drunk, Chowder being mean to animals beggared belief.

Lardo intercepted them before Nursey could find out what was going on.  She and Farmer shared a look, as if acknowledging a transfer of custody.  Lardo maneuvered him into her room, but not before he heard Chowder shushing whatever—whoever—was sobbing in his room.  Then he was pulled into what would soon be his room, pushed down onto a camping mattress with a sleeping bag and a blanket on it, and abandoned.

Dex took so much better care of him.  All Nursey had to put up with were the casual threats of violence.  Even now, he was pretty sure that Dex’s system would still correlate more severe violence and less serious threats.  It seemed, in retrospect, like toxically masculine (a known motif with Pointy—with Dex) cover for caring. 

Nursey woke early the next morning with a crick in his neck and death in his mouth.  And the sounds of someone puking in the shared bathroom.  It took all of Nursey’s willpower to avoid sympathy vomiting.

There was no bottle of Gatorade by his head.  No bottle of painkillers with a grumpily aggressive note about his skills at pretending to not get hungover.  Giving in to inevitability, Nursey dragged himself from his cocoon of sleeping bag and blanket.  He twisted his shoulders from side to side, popping three vertebrae in the process. 

Upon getting up, Nursey realized he was still in his jeans from the night before.  The puking noises had stopped, so he stumbled into the bathroom to brush his teeth with the toothbrush Chowder had insisted he keep in his drawer for exactly this reason.

Dex was already at the sink.

He was shirtless, and his pastiness had a green cast to it, rather than its normal hint of pink.  His ass barely fit into the pajama pants he wore, meaning they must have been C’s.  Which meant that he’d slept at the Haus, Nursey thought, which meant he’d probably been the source of the awful noise from Chowder’s room.  Which meant that he was in rough enough shape to have an actual semi-public meltdown.  Which—shit.

Nursey must have been staring as the realizations fed like ticker tape through his brain.  Dex spat, rinsed, spat again.  Wiped his mouth.  Registering Nursey’s presence, his eyes widened and his free hand flew to his chest before he fled the bathroom.  Nursey caught a searing glimpse of Garamond-set words: **That one’s**.

If he were to complete the phrase, Nursey knew what the last word would be: _dangerous_.

Dex pulled his usual vanishing trick after the Keagster.  Or, at least, Nursey didn’t see much of him.  He found himself confused that he missed what he had reluctantly admitted was Dex’s brand of caring.  Being Dex’s, that entailed that it was so aggressive as to often be abrasive, but that just kept Nursey feeling raw and exposed at its lack.  He told himself it was just how things were now.

How they would have to be.

Nursey was at the Haus a lot toward the end of the year.  After all, there was only so much time left with the seniors.  Granted, Holster and Ransom were planning Haus 2.0 in Boston, but the team all knew it wouldn’t be the same (it would still be pretty sick, though).  It helped, too, that Bitty’s pie-production had ticked up as finals and graduation loomed closer, so he needed people around to consume what he made.  Nursey was at the kitchen table, resolutely not interfering with Dex’s bonding time with Bitty.  If asked, he would say he was there for the pie.

It was probably more surprising that Dex was there in the kitchen after what went down in the aftermath of the Keagster.  Nursey had adopted a nonintervention policy, and did his level best not to engage.  Dex, hopefully oblivious, was kneading his frustrations into dough when Holster started shouting.

‘Ransypoo!  Do you see what I see?’

Dex muttered something that might have been Christmas carol lyrics, or else something about seeing a putty tat.  Ransom tromped down the stairs, announcing to all and sundry that he’d seen a certain tadpole gone across the street to fraternize with the enemy.

‘Holtzy, if that’s what you saw, then I _did_ see what you saw.  What shall we do about this trespass to brodom and team solidarity?’

‘First, we need to ascertain whether the tadpole knows the wrong he did us.’

‘And to do that, we need him here for questioning.’

‘Dexicus Gingicus, would you do us a favor?’

‘Bro.  Vocative.  It’d be Dexice Rufule.’

‘What?  For real?  There’s Latin for redheads?  _Bro_.’

Ransom and Holster no-look fistbumped, all their focus still on Dex, whose skin had begun to pink and whose knuckles were white in the wet, stringy dough.

‘If it’s retrieving either Tango or Whiskey from across the street, then fuck no.’  Dex did not look up from the dough, fresh from the fridge.  Bitty, rolling out the last lump that Dex had worked into a pliable state, looked concerned.  From Nursey’s read on things, he wasn’t going to intervene just yet, though.  Confrontation, after all, held the same status for Bitty as schoolwork.

‘But Dex,’ Holster continued, ‘Dexy.  Dexabilly.’  Oh, Nursey was going to _save_ that one.  For a time when his sense of self-preservation had gone **completely** AWOL.  ‘What about team unity?  What about upholding the bylaws?  What about all that is good and just and right in the world?’

‘Team unity means only so much if you’re gonna enforce it in ways that restrict how people carry out their non-team life.  I assume you mean Bylaw Thirteen.  And that you’re not after a… facetiously literal reading of it.  And that, for _whatever fucking reason_ , you want to carry on Shitty’s crusade against them.’

Dex was watching the kitchen window, maybe for the errant tadpole’s return.  He saw Ransom open his mouth to interrupt—in a reflection, Nursey figured—and shook his head to preempt it.

‘No, don’t start.  Not yet.  I get your stance on them, at least to the degree that you want to hold parties here that have a lower risk of outbreaks of doucheliness or bad things happening to partygoers.  They're assholes, for the most part.  But it’s hardly like the lacrosse team has a monopoly on douches.  For example, my behavior toward Nursey a couple weeks back.  Or your current behavior toward the tadpoles in their absence.’

Dex threw the dough—worked _well_ past the point of usefulness, from the way Bitty was looking at it—down on the cutting board Bitty was using to roll out.  It landed with a wet slap.  He wiped his hands off on the apron Bitty had him wearing and reached up to get a loaf pan.  In the process, Dex's t-shirt rode up, and Nursey caught a glimpse of his skin and the waistband of his underwear.  Hopefully no one noticed his sharp intake of breath.

The Captains were looking at Dex like he had personally betrayed them.

Bitty looked like he wanted popcorn.

‘Are you saying, Billiam Dexalicious Poindexter, that we—your illustrious captains—are guilty of douchebaggery?’

‘I mean, yes?'  He was in full blush now, not quite embarrassed and not quite furious, but some unfamiliar middle ground between them.  'Even though Shitty would probably go off more at him if he ever actually policed anyone closer to his own year, Ransom’s a lot politer than you are about it a lot of the time, Holster.  Regardless, do you want to know _why_ I didn’t come out last year?  Why, instead of coming out, I _put up with_ a **year** of being thought a homophobe?  You know, by the bros whose motto is “got your back”?’

Holster had the sense to look worried at the nonsequitur.  Dex had raised his hackles, cat-like.  No—Nursey knew it was too much to even think too hard about, but—he was on aggressive display like a peacock or a swan.  An unnecessarily pretty hate-bird.

‘Because you couldn’t imagine me cuddling with anyone.  And if _that’s_ how you’d treat my decision to keep my soulmark covered, then I had double the reason I thought to keep you from ever seeing it—or seeing me with anyone.  And _since_ you pay so much attention to soulmarks, maybe you’ve noticed that one of Whiskey’s halfmarks states that he looks _uncomfortable_.  So maybe consider not being an asshole?  And, I dunno, _not_ making him even less comfortable with the team?  Just a thought.’

‘Anything else to add to the indictment?’  Nursey thought Ransom was going for wry, but… he’d missed.

‘No.’  With that, Dex appeared to have run out of words, although he still looked puffed up and ready to counterattack if needed.  When Holster didn’t issue any kind of challenge, he deflated and went back to the dough.  Slapped it into the loaf pan—was it bread dough, then, not pie?  Huh.  Put it in the oven and set the dials.

‘All set for you, Bitty.  Anything else?’

‘That’s all—thanks, Dex.’  Bitty reacted as if the prior few minutes had been nothing but pleasantries.

Dex acknowledged no one on his way out of the Haus.

Nursey settled into finals season, telling himself it was an opportunity to create new routines for himself, to recover from the failure of the old set.  Chowder took to tracking him down in study carrels and under trees to roll his eyes and pointedly let him know how Dex was doing.  Poorly, by and large.

When Nursey ran out of excuses fit for himself or others, he couldn’t find Dex in any of the ginger's usual haunts.  So he tried finding Dex in his room as a last resort.  When Nursey knocked, Dex opened his door slowly, as if leery of whoever might be knocking.  Confronted with his defensive partner, Dex looked nonplussed—or maybe was contemplating just shutting the door again.  Nursey said nothing as he waited for Dex to decide.  Dex’s t-shirt looked thin and soft from repeated washing, and was tight across his shoulders.  He was barefoot.

It almost turned into a standoff, but Dex broke first.

‘What can I do for you, Nurse?’  He sounded tired.

‘You, um, busy?’

‘Right out straight.  Kinda standard.  You know—finals.’  The circles under his eyes once again looked like they’d been drawn on in ink.

‘Right.  I was just heading to Annie’s for a study break.  Came to see if you wanted to join.’

‘…Annie’s?’  Dex raised an eyebrow.  ‘What, like neutral ground?  Or so that you make sure you’re in public while you’re around me?’

‘I, uh.  Thought you might prefer neutral ground.’  Nursey studied his feet, intensely conscious that they were—he was—still in the hallway.  ‘And probably for me to not be in your room.’

‘I think we’re both pretty clear on who of us is the more territorial, Nursey.  If you’d be comfortable talking in here, you can come in.  Otherwise, let’s go to Annie’s.’

‘If putting on shoes isn’t an imposition…’  Nursey forced a smirk.

‘If I don’t, they won’t serve me there.  Shitty tried.  Gimme a sec.’

The door closed.  Nursey lounged against the wall opposite, wondering if Dex would just leave their interaction at that.  It seemed unlikely, but it shouldn’t take two minutes to put shoes on.

Dex opened the door again, in different clothes—shorts not sweats, and a different t-shirt.  He nodded toward the stairs, and Nursey fell into step beside him.  It was a tense sort of silence, at least on Nursey’s end.  He couldn’t get much of a read on Dex from surreptitious glances and his peripheral vision.  It’s still somewhat chilly out, but Dex had different ideas of what constituted shorts weather—and at least one of either the pride or the temperature regulation to back it up.

Annie’s wasn’t that crowded when they arrived.  Nursey could hear some kind of philosophy study group making awful ethics puns over near the books section, but there were several free tables. He tossed his jacket down on a table in a corner before joining Dex in line.  He nearly offered to pay for both of their drinks, but Dex fixed him with a glare as he opened his mouth.  So he didn’t.  Instead he got a giant rhubarb Danish—the joys of early spring—with plans to eat only half of it.

They sat, and still no one said anything.

Nursey retrieved their drinks—Dex had asked for his black coffee to go for some reason—and his (their) Danish.  Dex sat sideways in his chair, as if he had already scouted the exits and decided which way he’d run if he had to.  Nursey planted himself in his seat, cut the Danish approximately in half, and took his piece and the provided napkin.  All while avoiding looking directly at Dex.

‘So?’

Dex ignored the remainder of the Danish.

‘Um.  I wanted to apologize.’

‘Dude.  Seriously?’  Deadpan was _not_ the reaction Nursey was expecting.  ‘April Fool’s was fucking last week, and this isn’t cool.  I get that you don’t think we’re friends anymore—or maybe that we never really were?—and that’s.  That’s your decision, when it comes down to it.  But there’s no need to be cruel.’  He looked almost sad to be laying it out like that.  Like he didn't want it to be true.

‘Wait wait wait wait wait.  What?’

‘What do you mean, _what_.’  Just like that, it was back to the Vesuvius scale.  An eight, maybe.  ‘I know I fucked up before break, and I came here thinking you might be willing to at least hear my apology for that.  I kinda figured it might be, I dunno, a closure thing for you since you seemed pretty intent on making me move out after my outburst.  In case you feel any prickles of conscience about the premium I’ll pay for finding an apartment or room mid-term, I’m budgeting for it based on my summer job.’  Dex somehow managed to look defiant while taking a pull of his coffee.

‘I was serious, though?’  Nursey hated sounding small.  He wanted to just sound nice and declaratory.  He sipped his chai—still too hot, but it was something to do.  ‘I said stuff I didn’t mean, stuff I shouldn’t have said.  I’m sorry.  At the very least, I shouldn’t have made you feel like we weren’t friends.’

Nursey pushed the plate toward Dex, who continued to ignore it.

‘Okay.  I mean, I get why you reacted like that—there are many better ways I could have asked what you’d done for dibs, and maybe _not_ sounded racist.  Cuz I had been wondering about what you’d been doing for it.  But, like, wasn’t gonna ask, because I figured you were being stealthy about your efforts and that meant you wouldn’t like anyone noticing.’

‘Yeah, your question came off… rather differently.’ 

Dex grimaced, nodded.

‘For what it’s worth, that was not how I meant that.’

‘Probably about as much as it’s worth how much I talked about money and presuming to know that your job might allow you to live anywhere else.  I, uh, hadn’t thought about how you moving out would affect how much room and board would cost.’

‘That was kinda assumed.  Or, at least, that you wouldn’t know separate from having thought about it or not.  What really hurt, though, was the casual dismissal of the labor I put into the Haus—like physical effort is lesser.  Less personal, less worthwhile, um.  Less worthy.  Than your skilled and finely tailored bibliographical assistance.’

Dex kept a neutral tone, but his comparison was enough.  Nursey didn't respond immediately, in case Dex had something more.

‘If Lardo had asked you for help on her thesis and her papers, would you have done it even without the possibility of getting her dibs?’

‘Yeah.  Might not have gone quite as hard on some of the more last minute response papers, but she’s a friend who needed help.’

‘Exactly.’  Dex nodded, as if it was the response he’d expected—and as if the response proved some point he hadn’t stated.

‘Huh?’

‘I like knowing my friends aren’t at risk of their frat house—our Haus now, for as long as we both live there—falling down while they sleep.  Just cuz a lot of the repair work wasn’t based on a bargain with or a particular favor for anyone in the Haus in particular doesn’t mean that no one benefitted.  And like you with Lardo’s papers, I would have worked on the Haus in the absence of dibs, but I felt dismissed when you said it shouldn’t count.’

‘Sorry I made you feel that way, Dex.  That wasn’t my intent.’

Dex smirked, made a ‘Sure, Jan’ face.  ‘Well there.’

He took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

 ‘So—we’re both sorry, and we’ve both apologized for the shitty things we said.  Where… um.’  Dex turned in his seat so he was facing Nursey more than the door.  ‘Where does that leave us?’

‘Friends?  Who are gonna live together and probably annoy the hell out of each other?  We can figure out bunk arrangements and talk about furniture and space and come up with some sort of roommate contract or whatever.  It’ll be—good.  Yeah?’

‘Sounds good.  Can I ask a question, though?  Before we move on from the dibs shitshow?’  Dex started to tear rings off the top of the paper cup, and was methodically ripping them into wax paper squares.

‘Uh, yeah.  What’s on your mind?’

‘Why were you focusing on Lardo’s dibs instead of trying to get in on the attic?’

Nursey took a long pull from his chai, which had finally cooled off enough.

‘Cuz you need a bolt-hole, and sometimes I piss you off enough that you retreat even from me.  I figured it wouldn’t be fair to you, particularly since you seem to think I’m territorial, too.  Which,’ Nursey caught Dex’s eye and smirked, ‘is fake.’

‘Oh whatever, Nurse.’  Dex’s mouth twitched up, and it seemed like they might survive this after all.  He seemed to ignore the unspoken parts of Nursey’s statement, which was probably all to the best.

‘Like, I can no more promise to not be an asshole than you can.  But our room should be a safe place for both inhabitants, even if it means we have to figure out how to make that happen.  Also, since you haven’t picked up on it, that half of the Danish is for you, bro.’

‘Speaking,’ Dex said as he picked it up, ‘of ways in which communication can be improved.’

‘Says the man who believes that actions are all that’s necessary in life.’

‘Only if we’re talking exclusively one or the other.  Words alone don’t get you very far, except in, like, Shakespeare.’

‘You leave Billy Shakes out of this.’  Nursey summoned up mock offense.

Dex snorted, and then his face went serious again.

‘I didn’t actually apologize.  So.  I’m sorry I was an ass, and that I said things that, despite not being intended to, probably came off to you as racist.  I’m gonna work on thinking before talking, even when I’m angry.  Should come in handy next year.’

Dex paused, took a bite of Danish.  Made an appreciative noise. 

‘I, uh, thought you didn’t want to live with me because you hadn’t been after the attic.  Like living with me would be a bad thing in your mind—like you didn’t think we were friends.  At least on my end, though, you’re one of my best friends.  Just.  For the record.’

‘For the record, eh?’

‘You don’t have to say it back if it’s not the case.’ 

Dex was back to tearing up his coffee cup.  He was actually worried about this.

‘I don’t really rank my friends—it’s always been a matter of who I’ve spent the most time around.  A lot of my friendships before I got here had pretty tenuous or superficial bases, so there’s, like, friends and friends and _friends_.  Nevermind.  But we spend a lot of time together, Pointy, even outside of hockey.  And it’s a pretty good time, even including the less serious threats of violence.  And—’

‘That’s a lot of qualifiers there, Nurse.  It’s okay.  I get it.’ 

Dex moved to stand up, to go.  Nursey tried—failed—to grab Dex’s arm.

‘Hold up, Dexy.  I think we’re both reaching our emotional capacity for the day.  We _are_ friends, and, like.  I can’t put you ahead of Chowder, but I can’t think of too many others I can say that about?  So, yeah.  To riff on one of your signature phrases.’

And there was the Poindexter blush.

‘I can’t put you ahead of Chowder either.  Neither of us deserve him.’

‘So true.  You good?  We good?’

‘Yeah.  But don’t make me keep talking about emotions and social standing and shit.  You’ll ruin my rugged Mainer reputation.  Give it at least a couple days so I can recover.’

Nursey rolled his eyes and poked Dex in the shoulder.

‘Throw away your arson pile, and we can go check what Bitty’s baking.  See if he’ll bake us some kind of peace treaty pie or something.’

‘Does rhubarb even taste good with chocolate, though?’

‘Are you doubting Bitty?’

‘Never where he can hear me.’

* * *

Bitty got the C—and with a unanimous vote.  It shocked only him, although Dex got the impression that some of his teammates seemed surprised that he’d have voted for Bitty—which, could they get fucking over that?  He was Bitty’s baking protégé, and had spent most of the year in a relationship with a dude.  Regardless, the team banquet was a good time, even if it was another occasion that required his suit.  Nursey was the only member of the team daring enough to forego a tie—and the pretty bastard got away with it, too.

The Frogs’ plans to roadtrip out to the West Coast to get Dex to his internship by late June had been presumptively scrapped after spring break.  Chowder had said he’d still let Dex drive him out, rather than fly, since he’d been invited to spend some time with Nursey in New York before Nursey’s own internship started.  That, in turn, gave Dex an opportunity to visit home and family at least a bit during the summer, since his internship went right up until the last minute they were due back at school.

Dex did not particularly relish the thought that he’d have a 72-hour race across the country on the way back to Samwell in August.

The run-up to finals was as stressful as expected—except for Ransom, who seemed to have decided he could finally relax and enjoy his senior spring.  Dex spent a fair amount of time coding with Chowder or sitting near Nursey as he fell into writing fugues and offered spoken-word outlines of his papers before thanking Dex for his contribution and falling back in.  The Frogs took turns reminding each other to eat.

The busy-ness helped with the heartbreak.  So did Chowder’s hugs.  Nursey, like Lardo, never asked.

Everyone was excited about the Falcs’ progress through the quarter-finals and then the semi-finals.  Jack promised tickets to any home games anyone wanted to come to as long as it didn’t interfere with their—or Bitty’s—finals schedules.  The entire crew trooped down to Providence to watch the Falcs destroy the Sharks.  Chowder, resolutely in his Sharks hoodie with a Martin Jones jersey on over the top, oscillated between giddily excited (the Sharks!  And the semi-finals!  And Jack!) and mournful (Jack.  Just scored.  Against Aaron Dell.  _Again_.).  They got ushered back into the locker room, and Dex may have been reduced to stammering in the presence of so many professional hockey players (which had nothing to do with his hero-worship of Jack, thank-you-very-much-Nursey).

Snowy took a selfie with Chowder, as did Tater.  Bitty busted out laughing when Tater tweeted it at the Sharks, saying there was a traitor in the Falcs’ locker room.  Tater then proceeded to demand a group picture with the Samwell folks, prompting Jack to ask if he should worry about being replaced by Tater.  Jack and Tater joined them for a late dinner after the game—Tater bought, saying that food was clearly the way to SMH’s hearts and he was only following Bitty’s example.

Bitty swatted his arm, smiling all the while like it was the best flattery he'd had in weeks.

After that game, time seemed to speed up in its passage.  There was studying and pie and televised hockey.  Days didn’t so much blur together as they got busy and rushed and hard to adequately describe in any amount of detail.  Dex’s Ma laughed when he tried to in their weekly call and found that he just… couldn’t.  Plus, everything was overshadowed by the remnants of Louis—apparently one of the new frogs (waffles, by some leap of Bitty-logic) was named Louis, but pronounced like French—or else by graduation.

Dex told himself it shouldn’t be hitting him so hard—that Lardo and Ransom (and, less tragically, Holster) were graduating—as if scolding himself to keep it together in the face of their departure were in any way effective.  Chowder seemed to chalk a good deal of his behavior up to finals, but Nursey sussed out the particular reasons Dex was being extra sharp.

They were in the library—a back corner of the upper level, so Nursey could recite and Dex could swear at code without disturbing anyone who wanted to actually study quietly.  Chowder had left a bit before for his Art History exam.  Nursey was reciting something awkwardly erotic about god (at least, from what Dex could tell, since it started off by addressing God).  It distracted Dex, and he couldn’t bring himself to pop his earbuds in to ignore Nursey.  Especially once he started to smirk.  As if he knew Dex was listening, and now it seemed a competition: if Dex put in headphones, he lost for discomfort.  So Dex set his laptop aside and rested his chin on his hands and watched Nursey intently as he whispered awkwardly hot poetry about God across their table.

Nursey seemed to come alive under his attention—he went from just reciting to making suggestive faces as he read.  Dex blushed madly, but kept a straight face throughout.  Nursey kept reading, but by the end it was more of a hoarse whisper and he wasn’t meeting Dex’s eyes.  He finished—‘Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me’—and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck.

Dex slowclapped.

Nursey stood and bowed.  Sat back down with a grin and a bit of recovered composure.

‘This performance brought to you by one of the most amazingly awkward poets ever to live.’

‘Where do you rank in that pecking order, Nursey?’

‘Fuck you, that’s where.’

‘Does this mean you were comparing me to God just there?’ 

Dex sat back up and shifted back to looking at his computer, but not before he saw Nursey light up at his sarcasm.  Which was weird, but… also very Nursey.

‘You _were_ listening!  But no.  I wouldn’t offer dead white guys to anyone I’d be interested in dating.’  A beat of silence.  ‘Was mostly trying to get you to stop your mope-then-be-angry-at-your-laptop cycle.’

‘That’s what I do in finals, Nursey.’

‘You don’t always mope.  If you need to talk, I can listen.  Won’t even chirp.’

‘Eh.  Just.  A bunch of stuff you probably don’t wanna hear about.  At least, not from me.'  Dex was _not_ going to complain about boys to Nursey.  That way lay madness.  'Graduation and, like, what comes next with that.  I know it’s stupid.  Like, I know Rans and Lardo are just moving into Boston, but—’

‘But that doesn’t help much when you’re used to them just being ambiently around?  Even when you kinda wish our glorious Captains might leave something alone for just a single damn minute?’

‘Ayuh.  Pretty much.’

‘You could talk to them.  Like, about this.  Or just generally let them know you like them, appreciate them, and will miss them.  You, uh, don’t always convey those things well in words.’

Dex made a face.

‘So emotional constipation it is.  Just hang out with them.  We can go see if Lardo needs help clearing out her space in Kotter or whatever—or you can, if you wanna do that solo.’

Nursey nodded once, as if he were satisfied with his suggestions, and knuckled back down to silent studying.  Dex took that as a cue to get back to his own work.  They met up with Chowder and Farmer for dinner, and neither of them talked about it—either the awkward poetry reading or Nursey’s advice.

Dex did help Lardo clear out Kotter, two days later.  They worked efficiently and with minimal conversation beyond Lardo’s instructions about what to haul where.  When they were done, though, she poked Dex in the side to get his attention and jumped up to give him a hug when he turned to face her.  She said she’d miss him, that he should make sure to visit her in Boston, and that he’d better not fuck up her room.

Ransom was harder to pin down, especially without Holster around, too, but Dex managed to find him and get coffee.  They had one last Anxiety Bros check-in.  Rans assured him that he wasn’t vanishing, although Dex already knew that.  He’d _have_ to come back, Rans told him, to make sure that they were upholding the tradition of holding the swawesomest kegsters on campus.

Once his finals were mostly done—just a paper left and a take-home exam for logic—Dex spent his time just hanging around the Haus.  The post-break-up inquisition had subsided, and enough time had passed that the Haus couples didn’t grate on raw nerves anymore.  Plus, there were stress-pies and nigh-constant procrastination gaming.

Graduation was happy and terrible.  Shitty came back, which was great both generally and as a vocal, profane distraction to how hard Dex was working on holding himself together.  It was stupid, he told himself—therefore, best to put it from his mind entirely.  It wasn’t like family disappearing (except that it felt exactly like that). 

The hockey team’s cheering for its seniors nearly interrupted the flow of the graduation procession.

The team reconvened at the Haus, where Dex and Nursey had been moving their boxes as they packed out of their dorms.  Bitty had baked enough that no one was short on pies—sweet or savory.  There was a good late lunch spread, too, which SMH and assorted family made short work of before filtering out to various evening celebrations.  Lardo, before she left, made Dex carry her in a piggyback around the Haus—because if he was gonna carry them around anyway, she might as well get some benefit out of it.  Holster got a broish fistbump, but Ransom swooped in for an unexpected hug.

That broke Dex’s wavering composure, so he retreated to cry and finish packing the last two boxes of his dorm room into his truck.

Once he’d recovered himself, he met up with Nursey and Chowder in Nursey’s room in Olin to say goodbye to them.  To let them know he was heading out and that he’d pick Chowder up in New York so they could drive West in ten days.  Nursey countered that, while Dex was—of course—free to do that, if certain unstated circumstances came to pass he would of course be welcome to stick around for a bit in case celebrations were necessary.

In that event, Dex countered, he’d pick them up and they’d watch any potential final games at the Haus, because it’s closer.  But otherwise, they should plan on his dropping by Nursey’s house to retrieve Chowder.  Nursey snarked that it would be like a custody hand-off.   Chowder objected, asserting that they couldn’t have custody of him to begin with unless they’d been married first.  Dex didn’t notice Nursey’s reaction because he was too busy inspecting his shoes.  _So_ many reasons that would never—could never—come to pass.  

Naturally, then, it was all Dex could think about on the drive back up to Waldoboro.

Ma greeted him with a hug long enough that his sisters had time to tumble out of the house and pile onto it, until there was just a huddle of Poindexters in the driveway.  Eileen kept trying to climb up William’s back, as if she weren’t in high school and approaching his height.  Edmund eventually came out to remind his wife that she had things on the stove, and did she want him to turn the burners off.

William got the standard gruff handshake from his father.

The whole family came over for dinner that night to celebrate his return, and Dex learned that he was forbidden from cooking when James was over for dinner.  Apparently Ma, at least, didn’t want a repeat of the Scotch Bonnet incident.  Elise and Danny kept him busy, competing for his attention and regaling him with disjointed stories of grade school.

He could have stayed in his own room that first night—it was still his for the duration of his stay.  Even if it _had_ become a guest room since he’d gone off to Samwell.  Another little reminder that home didn’t fit anymore.  So when Ryan and Mark started getting ready to leave, William didn’t try to pry Danny off his leg.  He walked into the kitchen, dragging Danny along with him, to hug his Ma, hauled his nephew _back_ to the foot of the stairs to get his bag that he’d dropped there upon arrival, and—once Danny resituated himself on William’s back—carried him out to the car.

‘Ryan—Danny appears to have picked up a stray.’

‘Can we keep him, Dad Ryan?’

‘Only until it’s time to set him loose into the wilds again.  A week, maybe?’  Ryan looked at William, silently inquiring.

William shrugged, nodded.

‘Yaaaaaay!’  Danny had grabbed handfuls of William’s hair on either side of his head and entertained himself by pulling it back and forth.  It only hurt when William resisted.

Even though he was the biggest person in the car, William found himself riding in the middle, with clinging kids on either side.  Elise wanted to know all about how hockey went and what college was like; Danny wanted to know how long he was staying and to show off how much better he’d gotten at swimming (he’d gotten a trophy and everything for being the most improved swimmer on his team).

They got to Mark and Ryan’s house, and the adults were all ready to go to sleep.  Not so Danny and Elise.  They vocally resisted bedtime.  Danny demanded William read him a story.  William agreed—it was an alluring combination of being useful and being wanted at the same time that he found impossible to resist.  Ryan had been running Danny through The Hobbit, so William did the voices for Gandalf and the rest and sang almost-a-proper-tune to Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees until Danny had drifted off.

While he’d been reading to Danny, everyone else had settled in for the night.  William filled up his water bottle in the kitchen, snagging a cookie from the family-and-friends cookie exchange, before taking his bag up to ‘his’ room.  He munched on the molasses cookie, closed the door, and opened up his phone.  The SMH group chat was blowing up—still, hours after the game—about Jack’s goals and the Falcs’ win in Game Three.  Once he got caught up on the events of the game, William checked in on the Frog group chat.

**Me:** Made it to Maine.  At Ryan’s house because his kids are possessive of me, seems.  You two get into Manhattan alright?

**Chris Chow:** Yeah!  Nursey showed off his licensed driving skillz and took us in through rush hour.  Which means we made it just in time to see Jack’s second goal.

**Me:** what was the almost-body-count?

**Derek Nurse:** Zero, Dexington.  Neither cars nor pedestrians were harmed in this cross-state transit.

**Me:** I’m shocked.  And grudgingly impressed.  Glad you’re both not dead.  Have fun in NYC.

**Chris Chow:** it’s gonna be great!  Nursey is gonna take me around to all the touristy stuff tomorrow and pretend he’s /also/ not from NYC.

**Me:** because a New Yorker doing anything touristy would automatically make you unchill?

**Derek Nurse:** It’s just not _done_, Dexy.

William settled into bed, catching up on the other Frogs’ plans for their time in New York as he shifted toward sleep.

Morning came bright and early, in the form of Danny landing across his midriff, yelling like a maniac.  William tried to catch Danny, to turn them both over and make it snuggling time, but his nephew was having none of it.  He squirmed out of William’s grasp, squealing and laughing the whole while.  There would be no more sleep.

‘Unca William!  Aunt Kelly’s back and there’s gonna be a family meeting!  You gotta get ready!’

‘A family meeting, Danny?’

William rolled them both upright, so he was at least sitting as he tried to figure out what Kells might have done to prompt _that_.

‘I’m gonna go get ready, Danny.  See if you can get Dad Ryan to make us pancakes with chocolate chips?’

‘Good idea!’ 

Danny shot off toward his new mission.  William, now _wide_ awake, was free to shave, shower, brush his teeth, and get dressed.   Once he was ready, he went downstairs, where Ryan had, as expected, given in to the pleading of his younger child, and was leaning against the tile counters, mixing a heaping scoop of chocolate chips into a bowl of pancake batter.  Seeing William grin, he rolled his eyes.

‘So you’ve taken to recruiting children to beg for chocolate _for_ you?’

‘They’re more effective.  You’ve become resistant to my puppy dog eyes.  But who could resist Danny’s cunnin’ little mug?  Good job, by the way, Danny.’  He offered Danny a high five, just as Mark and Ellie joined them, the latter still in her pajamas.  She pulled a face at William as her parents kissed by the counter, as if her reaction might make them be less nauseatingly cute.

‘You’re weak against making your family happy, my dear.  And what’s worse, they know it.’

‘Yeah, well.  You love it.’

‘Guilty.’

William picked up the abandoned bowl of batter, and dragooned Ellie into helping make the pancakes.  They made an efficient team, especially once William had Danny get some bacon out.  Once he had his own mug of coffee, he shoved one in Mark’s direction and shooed them off to be cute at the table rather than underfoot.

‘For the record, Ryan, you made the batter, but not the pancakes.’

‘I’ll just have to be the judge of their quality, then.’

‘Wager your kids’ll think they’re at least as good as yours.’

‘Stakes?’

‘If they are—Danny and Ellie as judges, cuz all the adults here are biased—you’ll admit to Ma that I’m the better cook of the two of us.  If not, I’ll do all the dishes while I’m up here.’

‘You’re confident in your pancake game.’

William shrugged, and kept an eye on the bubbling batter.

 

Everyone was well fed by the time they rolled in.  William gave Danny a piggy back ride from Mark’s car around the side of the house to the semicircle of logs and camp chairs around the fire pit in the door yard.  They were not quite the last to arrive—Siobhan was about five minutes behind. William smirked as Danny pushed his father—by the back of the head—forward into the circle.

‘Ryan’s got an announcement, Ma.’

‘Oh?  What’s that, dear?’  She knew something was up, an imperfectly held smile and eyes ready to roll at her sons.

‘My children have betrayed me.  They’re under the misimpression that my _darling_ little brother’s pancakes are better than mine.  And a bet’s a bet, so my announcement is that William Jeremy Poindexter is a better cook than I am.  Even though I made the batter he cooked with.’

Ryan hung his head, mock-ashamed in the face of the laughter from the assembled extended family.  William clapped Ryan’s shoulder, playing it up like he knew Nursey would if it had been the two of them instead.

‘All of that’s true except for his kids betraying him.  They just recognize the truth more easily than Ryan.  And his making the batter means it’s purely a question of who cooked the pancakes better.’

‘I’m glad to hear that you two have finally settled this.  My thanks to your children for judging, since I could not be there to do so myself.  I hope, William, you don’t have aspirations to challenge me?’

‘Never as to general cooking or pancakes, Ma.’

‘Hmph.  At least I have warning now.’

Announcement out of the way, everyone settled into available seats.  Danny found his way to Mark’s lap and William took a seat next to Eileen, who laughed at him and offered quiet congratulations.  There was a murmur from the assembled families—not just William’s, but the full extended family, aunts and uncles and cousins from both sides—as Kelly came into view around the house with her arm around a rugged woman of middling height who looked like she’d be able to pick James up and bend him in half.

‘You didn’t need to muster the troops, Ma.  I just wanted to bring home my soulmate so you could meet her.’

The brunette beside her offered up a nervous little wave with the hand not holding Kelly’s.  There was writing on her palm, but William couldn’t make out what it said.

‘Nonsense, deeah.  It’s big news when someone meets their soulmate.  And no one’s brought anyone home from Away in a dog’s age.’

‘Well, here she is.  Andy, this is everyone.  Sort out names as you talk to folks.  Everyone, this is Andy.  Be nice.’

‘Um.  Hi.’  Andy gave that little wave again with her left hand—William caught a fleeting glimpse of **Definition of torture:**.

Eileen conjured up a deck of cards from somewhere and challenged William to a game of rummy while they waited for Kelly and Andy to circulate through the family to where they were sitting.  Eileen shuffled the cards several times, as if making a show of it.  William already knew she was a shark, but they had to pass the time somehow.

‘You don’t seem surprised, Billy.’  Eileen dealt out their hands.

‘Hmmm?’  William inspected his hand, only half listening to ‘Leen’s intentionally distracting questions.

‘No blushing or sputtering.  No deadpan reactions to cover your surprise.’

William rolled his eyes.  ‘All true.  And?’ 

Eileen drew the higher card, put hers in her hand, and locked eyes with her brother as she laid it back down along with the three other aces, then discarded a ten.

‘So—’

‘Yes.  I knew.’  William took his turn—draw and discard.

‘How’d you get it out of her?’ 

She drew a card, discarding a five that would fill William’s inside straight.  He picked it up and tossed down the three through seven of spades.  Discarded the queen of hearts he’d drawn at the start to determine who’d go first.

‘Solidarity or blackmail.  Take your pick.’

‘Why not me?’

‘You never seem to want to talk about anyone.’  Draw; discard—another ten.

‘You make it seem like I don’t have friends, Billy.’

‘I meant that it gives the impression you might not want to hear us moon over folks if you’re not gonna.  Maybe.  Also, at least with Kelly, she’s just enough older than you?’

‘And you?’  Eileen played the eight and nine of spades.  Discarded.

‘I don’t have anyone to talk about.’

‘You’re blushing.  I take it you still don’t know who thinks you’re dangerous?’

‘I—’ William took his turn instead of responding.

‘ _There’s_ the stammering.’  Eileen grinned in response to her brother’s weak glare.

‘No.’

‘But I heard that you totally do not—I believe the precise wording used was-- _flowers_ a particular someone?  You _have_ spent a lot of time on your phone since you’ve been back.  And you’re going Away for the rest of break.’

‘I’m going to kill Elise.  Also, that was Louis.  So, yeah.  That's done.’

‘Well there.’  Eileen drew back to the first discarded ten and dropped three of them onto the table.  Discarded the queen from the pile.  ‘I’d advise against threatening Mark’s kids—you may be a mother hen, but he’s a mama bear.’

William groaned, making ‘Leen grin all the broader.

‘I object to that pun.  And even though the timing's off, you heard correctly that I totally _do not_ feelings anyone at school.  I also have no particular urge to find a soulmate who thinks I’m dangerous.’

‘No apologies for the pun.  I’m sure the other half of your mark makes the whole thing a lot less shitty, but saying that probably doesn’t make it any better to wear.’

‘Yeah,’ Andy drawled as she and Kelly sidled up to the card game.  ‘I spent two years with _definition of torture_ on my fucking palms before this one confessed that she was in lesbians with me.’

‘Whyyyyyy is my soulmate embarrassing?’

William and Eileen looked at each other, stifling laughter.

‘Because you _lurve_ her,’ They responded in tandem.  Andy laughed.

‘Siblings—I feel like I should warn you, since you’ve never had to deal with them—are the worst.’

Eileen, as she gathered up her cards, gave William a final look suggesting that she planned to revisit the now-abandoned conversation later.

 

The remainder of William’s week at home went quickly, and William may have gone to some effort to make sure that Eileen never did properly have an opportunity to further grill him about boys he may or may not like at school or elsewhere.  He didn’t want to talk about it—he didn’t like admitting to being stupid in general, especially not when it was apparent on its face.  He’d make sure to get quality time with her at Christmas.

Since he was home, William took a couple shifts at Jim’s shop.  More to get a bit of time with Jim than to do the work.  He caught game four—texted Jack to send hopes of a swift recovery to Tater (got no response, but didn’t particularly expect one; later, Bitty texted to thank him).  The Frogs spent a long time texting after Jack dropped his gloves in game five—and concluded that Dex should drive down to meet up with them in New York so they could all arrive at once in Providence if they needed to.

Mrs. Poindexter was not enthusiastic about her son leaving so soon after getting home, but being friends with someone in the Stanley Cup Finals was mighty persuasive.  So, after nearly a week at home, Dex tossed his bags back into his truck and climbed into the driver’s seat to drive back down.  He even put on the Dex’s Remedial Music Education playlist to listen to as he left Maine for his summer Away.

So, I would like to correct that first impression:  
Revise your opinions and lead you to question  
Whatever of my faults live in your memory.  
To say that I want _us_ to get along as well—  
Even when we’re off the ice—as you did with him  
Is an understatement (just a bit), not a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Progress report: done with chapter 5, nearly halfway through Chapter 6 now (some content got reshuffled, so what had been 6 is now 7 and away we go). Still standing firm on the chapter count, because the poetry is an inherent constraint.


	5. Chapter 5

Chowder lived to regret trying to leave from the Haus without specifying a mandatory departure time.  The intention had been to leave before noon.  He and Nursey had gotten a late start—entirely unrelated to Nursey’s inability to move quickly in the morning without caffeine—because Bitty’d wanted to make sure they had goodie bags and a pie before they left.  Then he’d insisted that they have lunch before they go, because just coffee and cereal was apparently insufficient.  Suddenly it was two.

It was a smooth enough drive all the way through Massachusetts and Connecticut.  Nursey had plugged his phone into the dash, entered his address into the GPS, and pulled up the pop-punkest of Chowder’s shared playlists.  Then he relaxed back into the passenger seat and stared out the window at passing scenery for two hours.

It was the weirdest thing, being driven back from school.  It made Nursey feel shut in, as if the chill he kept up during stressful moments were back as a constant, a necessary fortification against the world.  Darlene had always made at least some tentative and well-meaning attempts to drag conversation out of him—his father never drove him to or from school.  Chowder let him ruminate and commune with the passing trees, bopping along to Cartel and Something Corporate and several bands Nursey didn’t recognize offhand.

Chowder started grumbling about delays and traffic as they began to hit the beginnings of rush hour in western Connecticut.  They pulled off the highway near Stamford, and Nursey grabbed snacks while Chowder filled the tank.  After a bathroom break and some caffeine, Nursey offered to take over for the City’s rush hour.  Grudgingly, Chowder agreed.  With that, they were back on the road.  Nursey assumed control of the music, putting on one of his ATCQ playlists.  As traffic worsened, Chowder fell into goalie mode.  He cursed at some length when someone cut Nursey off.  Nursey raised an eyebrow, but didn’t chirp him for it.

After all, Chowder hadn’t chirped Nursey for driving three miles under the speed limit, even on clear stretches.

It was nearing dusk by the time Nursey pulled off the highway.  He drove them into St. Albans, a pretty neighborhood whose large houses, recessed from the road and obscured by hedges or trees or mere distance across their drives, demonstrated the money in residence.  He shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal when Chowder pointed this out.

It was as if Dex were there with them—goggling at the houses, tallying up the costs.

Traffic had thinned out considerably, from dense City rush hour to quiet residential neighborhood.  It wasn’t five minutes from there until Nursey turned into a driveway that led to a garage behind a tree-shrouded white house with a manicured lawn and hedges partly obscuring the first floor windows, chiefly distinguishable from its neighbors by the full second floor and the red front door.  Chowder chirped him about how all the plants gave the house a green tint.

There were no other cars in the garage, although it could fit three.

They got out of the car and retrieved their bags.  Nursey could sense Chowder inspecting the house, which extended back on the side opposite the garage.  He pointed up at his room and the balcony leading off it over the extension.

‘That one’s mine.  Roof access is def the best feature.  The guest room you’ll be staying in is across the hall—looks out on the front.  No worries about shoes off unless you want, but do wipe your feet before going in.’

‘This explains why you have such a thing for the Reading Room.  Should get Dex to build you a fence out there.  Ooh!  Or a widow’s walk!’

They crossed the drive, stepped up onto the back porch, and walked into a gracious kitchen with white tile countertops and stainless steel appliances.  A narrow stairway led upstairs opposite two doors—a swinging door to the dining room and an open one into the main hallway.  The fridge was covered in word magnets and an embarrassingly old poem that Darlene wouldn’t let him rearrange.  Chowder slipped his shoes off once inside.

‘I don’t think Dex’ll be building me anything anytime soon.  Maybe a wall in the basement if he lures me down there with poetry and the promise of booze.’

‘Dex is not going to make your death into a Poe reference.  Plus, the Haus walls are thin enough that someone would hear you shouting, and I think we can all give him credit for better planning than that.’

Nursey led them through the main hallway and up the main staircase, figuring that it’d be better on the walls to haul bags up that way.  His shoes echoed slightly as he climbed.  He filled the house’s silence by offering a running commentary on rooms and art and—really, anything else that came to mind.

Chowder fell silent, examining Nursey’s house as he listened to Nursey ramble—it was a self-consciousness Nursey hadn’t really experienced before.  He’d had friends over from before he went to boarding school, and even a couple friends from Andover—chiefly Dorian.  Chowder displayed none of the culture shock (or disgust) he mentally projected onto the notion of introducing Dex to the house—from the sounds of things, though, Chowder’s family was in a similar socioeconomic ballpark to Nursey’s.

Once Chowder was in the guest room, Nursey flopped backward onto his bed with an explosive sigh.  No sense anticipating that trouble—it’d arrive soon enough.  A few minutes later, after kicking off his shoes, he padded down the back stairs into the kitchen to check the state of the fridge.

Empty.

Well, no leftovers and nothing obvious and easy.

Nursey called upstairs to Chowder to ask whether Thai was good for delivery, or whether he wanted pizza.  Chowder countered with a query about Indian.  Once the order was in, Nursey went into the den, flopped down into his chair, and turned the TV on to search for the Stanley Cup finals.  He tuned into the game’s channel just in time to see Tater shuttle the puck to Jack, who raced forward across the ice, scoring off a crisp slapshot.

‘Chowder get down here—Jack just scored!’

It was Jack’s second goal of the night, and he got a hatty just as food arrived.  Nursey had missed it because he was paying the delivery guy.  He put Darlene’s vindaloo on a plate that he then put into the warming drawer.  He set her up with a tray, though, that he left on the island—plate, glass, silverware, napkin—in case she wanted to join them.  He returned to the den with food, forks, and paper towels for himself and Chowder. 

The game was just about over by the time he heard Darlene’s car pull into the drive.  Nursey turned the TV down some just as the kitchen door opened.  He called out that they were in the den.  Darlene appeared shortly after that, carrying the tray and still wearing her court clothes.  If one looked carefully, the cream collar of her blouse didn’t quite entirely cover the silver SoulDye on her collarbones.

Chowder was standing as soon as she had set her tray down on the coffee table near her chair.  He offered a hand to shake, which she took, maintaining eye contact the whole while.

‘Hi, Mrs. Nurse!  I’m Chris Chow, one of Nursey—Derek’s teammates!’

Derek grimaced for just a moment before schooling his features.  Darlene had gone back to her maiden name after the divorce.

‘Hello, Chris—you’re Chowder?’  She offered him a tight, efficient smile.  ‘Please call me Darlene, or Ms. Miller if you’re as formal as some of Derek’s friends.  Sorry I’m home so late, Derek—I didn’t know what time you’d be getting in.’

‘Oh, snap—I forgot to text you, didn’t I?  Sorry, Darlene.’

They hugged, and Nursey flopped back down in his chair.

‘Not a problem.  I made good progress on a brief tonight.  Thank you for getting me the vindaloo.  How was the drive?’

‘It was good!  We got a bit of a late start, and then this one got hungry midway down so we stopped for snacks.’  Chowder pointed at Nursey.  ‘Then Nursey—Derek—took over driving and navigated us through rush hour.  We got our stuff upstairs and have been watching the game since!’

‘Sounds like a good day, then.  Do you have plans for tomorrow?’

‘Probably laze around.  Catch up on sleep.  I may take Chowder out to NYSCI if we’re feeling up to it.  Check out the Unisphere.  He wants to do touristy things, and I have to work up to it.’

‘Do you still have your tourist disguise that Dorian got you at Andover?’

Derek was shocked that she remembered that.  It was just a Bruins hat and an “I <3 NYC” shirt, but that was more than enough to be safely Not From Here.

‘Yeah, it’s somewhere in a drawer, I’m sure.  Thanks for reminding me.’

Once the game was completely over and they’d had enough of the replays and post-game analysis, Darlene checked if it would be alright to change channel to the news.  Nursey stayed in the den for a little while longer before taking the dishes into the kitchen, rinsing them, and filling the dishwasher.  Chowder helped.  Then they went upstairs and crashed after Dex let them know he’d gotten to Maine safely.

Nursey woke up the following afternoon to Chowder pounding on his door, demanding coffee.  He showed him where in the kitchen the French press was and pointed out Darlene’s coffee in the freezer, since he knew the goalie would prefer that to his beans.  Then he went and showered.  An uneventful day followed—a quick workout in the basement gym and a bunch of lazing about.  They (Nursey) couldn’t muster the energy to leave the house at all, much less trek up to the Unisphere.

The next day they got up early at Chowder’s insistence to go for a run.  Afterward, they got cleaned up and Nursey threw on his I Am A Tourist disguise.  They took the LIRR into Manhattan, and Chowder laughed at Nursey for asking for directions whenever he felt like someone might see through his camouflage.  They walked from Grand Central, first to Times Square and then into Central Park, where they got lunch.  All the while, they were taking pictures on their phones and barraging Dex with them.

After getting completely unnecessary directions—Nursey believed in method acting—they caught the subway over to the High Line and wandered down that for a while.  Nursey declared that they could check out Wall Street, the harbor, and the Brooklyn Bridge the next day if Chowder wanted to meet up with Dorian while here.  Chowder suggested that they save the Empire State Building for when Dex got there.

‘So now what?’ Nursey asked, as they neared the far end of the High Line.

‘Does New York have an aquarium?’ Several heads turned at that.

‘Yeah, there’s one in the Bronx, but it’ll be closed by the time we get there.  There’s a couple attached to zoos, but probably same.  We could go check the New York Aquarium out tomorrow before meeting up with Dori?’

‘Then let’s go check out the harbor now, maybe?’

 

Chowder was up early again the next day.  This would be a thing to get used to for next year.  Darlene had already left by the time Derek admitted to being conscious.  When he got into the kitchen, Chowder was already thrusting a thermos of coffee at him.  Nursey was dressed in linen pants and thin button-down open over an old Andover theater t-shirt; Chowder was in a Sharks t-shirt that looked like it might have been co-branded with some bay area aquarium, since SJ Sharkie was swimming alongside a host of other—less drawn—sharks.

Nursey drove them, since the drive would take a third of the time that a train into Manhattan and then down to the Bronx would require.  They arrived shortly after the aquarium opened.  Chowder may have squeed a bit upon seeing the advertisements for _Ocean Wonders: Sharks!_   Nursey didn’t blame him—it was the reaction he’d been hoping for.  It was toward the back, though, in the new post-Sandy construction, so they didn’t head that way immediately.

Chowder started taking pictures of the jellyfish, sending them to Caitlin. They found an exhibit on shellfish, and Nursey sent Dex a picture of a crawfish after filling in his missing part in the conversation with Chowder.  It escalated from there—Nursey snickered as he found increasingly dumb shellfish to text Dex.

 **Me:** [crawfish picture] It lobster.

 **Pointy:** Pretty sure that’s a crawfish, Nursey.

 **Me:** [fiddler crab picture] it lobster?

 **Pointy:** that’s a crab.

 **Me:** [mantis shrimp picture] lobster!

 **Pointy:** nope.  Just horrifying.

 **Me:** You’re no fun, Dexy.

 **Pointy:** you’re the one texting me before I’m admitting to being conscious.

 **Me:** and you’re responding?  I’m touched.

The pair of Frogs continued through the aquarium, texting up a storm.  Chowder steered them toward the shark tunnel once they’d escaped the sea floor area.  Nurse hung out off to one side of the tunnel for a while as Chowder tried his best to _not_ plaster his face against the glass.  It was peaceful there, almost underwater and surrounded by a bunch of indifferent predators.

His phone lit up with a notification from the Frog group chat.

 **Jaws:** [Nurse shark picture] Nursey!

 **Pointy:** Nah.  Not chill enough.  Also, you used that pun already.

 **Jaws:** Yeah, like, two _years_ ago.

Nursey sent them a picture of a narwhal.

 **Me:** Underneath the ocean/ causing a commotion

Chowder actually _giggled_ , and Nursey could see his shoulders shake in barely contained laughter.

 **Pointy:** I… don’t think.  Um.  No.  Lemme go find you, Nurse.

 **Pointy:** [sunfish picture] Here you are.  Beefy and mysterious and too chill to know when it should die.

 **Pointy:** No, that was not a threat on your life, Nursey.

 **Jaws:** . . .

 **Me:** Don’t you have work to do, Dexy?

 **Pointy:** Nnnnnnope.  Why do you think I was still trying to sleep just now?

From there, it was almost like Dex was with them at the aquarium, a stream of deadpan snark.  It felt right, like a restoration of balance that had been off-kilter since the spring.  Dex kept pinging their groupchat with fish to find in the aquarium, and the progression from one tank to the next made Nursey wonder if he’d somehow found a map of the aquarium on the internet and was leading them through it.

Chowder derailed that thought by announcing that _he_ was a sea otter.

 **Me:** C says he’s a sea otter.

 **Pointy:** Nah.  He’s not hairy enough to be an otter.

 **Me:** What.

 **Jaws:** [six cry-laughing emoji]

 **Pointy:** What?

They stayed to watch the actual otters get fed, which was ridiculous and adorable. Chowder was obviously kin to the sea otters.  The goalie spent the show on the group chat, sending Dex pics and trying to convince him that he _could too_ be an otter.  Dex responded with a link to a website offering definitions for all the animals in the gay menagerie.

After the show, they headed back to Nursey’s car.  Nursey texted Dorian before they left to offer up a tentative ETA.  It wasn’t a terribly long drive, and midday traffic was negligible.

‘Hey—tell me a bit about Dorian, so we can skip past the basic who-exactly-are-you questions?’

‘One of my best friends from Andover.  Chill dude—understated.  Started a couple years below me—us.  Skipped ahead a year after I graduated.  We were both among the theater queers.  We never dated, before you ask.  He believes in soulmates like Dex did freshman year.  Just finished up his freshman year at Columbia.  Not sure if he’s aiming at a technical theater degree—he hadn’t decided, last we talked about it—but he’s mad good.  Lights especially.’

‘Nice!  He sounds like a good guy.’

‘The best.  He hosted me for Christmas a couple times, during the shittier parts of my parents’ divorce and the run-up to it.’

Chowder nodded, possibly unsure what to say.  If anything.  Nursey never really talked about his family with the team.  Hell, Chowder was the first member of SMH—other than Shitty—to meet either of his parents.

The coffee shop was, confusingly, called Barista.  It was a two-floor space, with very different personalities to the separate floors.  The lower floor was bright, with a metal-and-exposed-beams-and-pipes industrial style, and had a bunch of neon and fluorescent art going on.  Upstairs was dim, quieter, and full of overstuffed chairs near small tables.

Dorian waved at them from upstairs, at a chair that looked down over the balcony edge and had a view out the front windows.  Nursey grinned and waved back.

‘You go say hi to him.  I’ll get yours.’

‘You sure?’

‘Course! I’ll be right there.’

Chowder beamed, and Nursey—once again—felt a rush of happiness that they were friends.  He trooped up the stairs and, even knowing what was coming, had just enough time to brace for a check as Dori flung himself at Nursey.

‘Nurse!’

‘It’s a good thing there are only ten people up here, Dori.  It’d be a shame if you disturbed all of them.’

‘Oh hush.’  He turned, still hanging off Nursey, to look over his shoulder at the two people still staring.  ‘Sorry, folks.  Haven’t seen this one in a while.’

Nursey snorted.  Put Dori down.  Took the seat beside where Dori had been sitting.

‘So the dude you walked in with.  He’s not your cantankerous redhead.’

‘Dex is emphatically not _my_ anything.’

‘Just the—apparently unwitting—inspiration for some of the most **delightfully** angsty poetry I’ve ever seen spill forth from your pens.’  He brushed curls from his eyes and retook his seat.

Nursey shushed Dori.  A moment later, Chowder came up the stairs, carrying a chai for Nursey and a mug containing either a mocha or just hot chocolate.  He set both down before turning the full wattage of his smile onto Dori.

Nursey definitely caught Dori’s eyes sweep across the glory of Chowder.  Couldn’t fault the man for taste.  Would be interesting to see how that played out.

‘Hi!  I’m Chris—or Chowder, if you like.’

‘Good to meet you, Chris—Derek’s told me stories.  Good ones, don’t worry.  I’m Dorian, although Derek still calls me Dori.’

They shook hands—an oddly formal gesture between two of Nursey’s best friends.

‘So Nursey says that you’re gonna be a sophomore at Columbia?  He mentioned you were big into theater.’

Chowder took a sip of his drink, raptly focused on Dori’s answer.

‘Yeah!  I’m still considering between a technical theater major and one that’s… more broadly employable.  Physics probably.  If so, I’d probably still get a concentration in theater.’

‘A concentration?  Is that like a minor?’

‘Yeah—Columbia doesn’t have minors, but does have concentrations.  I’m not honestly sure how they compare to each other.’

‘Why physics?  Isn’t a degree from Columbia _a degree from Columbia_ , even if it’s “just” in theater?’  Chowder made finger-quotes to emphasize his tone.

Dori, by then, had figured out that he had a cooperative audience—from there it was off to the races.  Nursey listened idly for a while, until the subject shifted from Dori and Columbia to Nursey and what he had been like before Samwell.  At that point, he pulled out a notebook—one of the ones Whiskey had gotten him for totally-not-secret-santa—and made a point of laying it on the table.

‘Is that a sign we should table this for when I start texting him later, Nurse?’

‘Hardly.  But if you’re gonna air out my secrets, I’m gonna pay at best half attention to it.’  He smirked at Chowder to assure him that he wasn’t actually irked about it.  ‘Carry on.’

Nursey tuned them out for a while—Chowder was animated and looked earnestly happy rather than just enthusiastic and chipper.  Dori was in full storytelling mode—no; full flirting mode.  Strike interesting, that would be _fun_ to see play out.  He told Chowder about the time that Shitty had joined Darlene for Parents’ Weekend Nurse’s senior year, about the time that Nurse showed them the graffiti he’d helped Shitty and his crew with, about how weird and enabling a prefect Nurse had been.  He went into delightfully vague detail about how Nurse’d casually ordered SoulDye off the internet almost immediately upon returning from his visit to Samwell’s accepted students weekend.

 _Shit_.

Nursey could feel Chowder’s eyes snap to him, and it took effort to not freeze—to not behave like prey.  He kept his breathing steady through years of practiced effort, kept making notes in his notebook through sheer force of will.  Looked up, casually confused, when Chowder cleared his throat.  Dori looked—understandably—bewildered at the near appearance of FTG.

‘Huh?  What’s up, Chowder?’

‘Oh.  Nothing much.  Just filing away important pieces of blackmail information.’

Nursey raised an eyebrow while screaming internally.

‘Dori, you weren’t telling him about my adventures in technical theater, were you?’

‘Oh, shit no.  That bribe is still enough to keep my lips sealed.’

Bless that man and his skills at improv.  Really.

‘Good.  Glad to hear it.’  He took a steadying sip of his chai.

The three of them sat in an awkward silence for a beat.  Chowder’s goalie-glare was boring into the side of Nursey’s face.  Dorian was trying to ask complicated—and obvious—questions with his eyebrows.  Nursey was trying to keep his chill intact without, like, dialing it up to an obvious degree.

‘So.’  Dorian started, addressing Chowder with what was obviously going to be a nonsequitur.  ‘And I apologize for this, but you're sixteen sorts of hot and so I've gotta ask. Um.  Do you have a soulmark already?’

Chowder flushed slightly, but beamed as he nodded enthusiastically.  Nursey could see Dori’s whiplash at the sudden change from hyperintense goalie-face to Chowder-puppy.  And then Chowder lifted his t-shirt to display the courier on his stomach (and, also worthy of note, his abs).  Nursey was ninety percent sure Chowder knew exactly the effect he was having, which… yeah.

Dori, by creative use of eyebrows, was asking Nursey if Chowder were even real.  Nursey smirked back.

‘Yeah!  Um.  Sorry.  Yeah, my soulmate’s name is Caitlin and she’s amazing.  I, uh, know it takes a bit for a new soulmark to develop.  So on the off chance I find myself with a new one in a couple hours, I’ll text you?’

‘Sweet!’

‘Yeah, he is that.’

Chowder knocked his shoulder into Nursey.

Dori held his phone out to Chowder, who took it, entered his contact info, texted himself, and handed it back to Dori.

‘So you two are just chilling in the City a while?’

‘Unless the Falcs pull ahead, then we’ll go back to Massachusetts once they’re in striking distance of the Cup to watch from the Haus.  Our friend Dex is coming down—is it tomorrow, Nursey?—to watch from here.  If they lose, he and I will head west.’

‘Yeah.  Tomorrow.’

‘Such enthusiasm for your muse, Nurse.  Road trip?  This the one you learned to drive for, Derek?’  Dori turned to Chowder.  ‘I’m impressed you got him to learn.  He resisted all through Andover.’

‘He says, having known me for only half my time there.’

‘Yeah, the half during which folks were pressuring you to learn.  The half during which you put up the most fight about it.  Point stands.’

‘I don’t know that I did anything except suggest a Frog road trip.  I think it was Dex who wouldn’t do it if Nursey couldn’t drive.’

‘Ah, the mysterious Poindexter.’  Dori’s brown eyes shone with mischief.  Digging for (more) blackmail information.  As if he needed anything more than the stories he already had.  ‘He was at the accepted students weekend thing, right, Chris?  Derek always clams up when I ask.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t know how much they interacted.’

‘We were in the same space, let’s say.’  Maybe that admission would suffice for Dori.

‘Dex had… a lot of growing up to do.  And needed some lessons in finesse.’

‘You say that as if everyone else there was an adult and he was the only one lagging behind.’

‘Nah.  To be fair to Dex for a moment, since he’s not here to leave rather than defend himself, we all did.  Perspective acquisition and all that.  Pointy was just… more obvious about it.’

‘Finesse.’

‘Yup.’  Nursey popped the “p.”

Dori, bless him, remembered that particular cipher and dropped the subject.  That just left him to deal with Chowder later.  The conversation meandered away from Dex and the Taddy Tour, and on to safer topics. Their aquarium adventures and the continued success of the tourist disguise and whether Darlene had cooked for Chowder yet—a tragedy that she hadn’t.

It was an excellent time.  Eventually, after more chatting and a couple games of cards, Dori had to head back home.  Darlene texted, according to Chowder—manning Nursey’s phone while Nursey drove—that she’d be home that night in time to cook, and would they be there.

‘Tell her yes, absolutely.  We’re on our way back.’

‘Okay!’

Silence held for about two minutes after that.  Or so.  Nursey paid less attention to time while driving.

‘So you got your halfmark on the way back from the Taddy Tour?’

‘Or maybe at Samwell, yeah.  Didn’t notice until I was in my dorm, so I passed through a fair chunk of Boston in addition to Samwell.  That’s a lot of people to have thoughts about.’

‘And the Taddy Tour was _early_ your senior year at Andover?’

‘Um.’

‘Nervous Dex might think you and him could be soulmates?’

‘Because the universe could be so cruel.’

‘Yeah, to make you—well, offer you the chance of agreeing to become—soulmates with a guy you butt heads with a lot and turned out to be pretty good friends with.  How vicious.  What’s your halfmark say, exactly?  I might as well pry.  You could lie about this, too, though, if you like.’

‘Rude, Chow.  It says “God damn him, that’s unfair”.  Full sentence, but no punctuation, so it probably continues.  In fucking Arial.’

‘And on your arm, so your person’s cuddly.  And basic, if the internet’s opinions of fonts are to be believed.  And that half kiiiiinda sounds like someone who needs "lessons in finesse" and possibly in dealing with people of color.  And a weird reaction, like, not to your appearance, it seems like, but something you did?  Or said you did?’

‘The point, Chowder?’

‘I’m just saying.  It all adds up to something very Dexly from where I’m sitting.  And you two hang out all the time, even when you want to kill each other.’

‘And I know that you saw his mark for at least a moment during the Keagster.  He kinda wigged completely out about that.  It was pretty bad.  Not sure if you know what it says, but—knowing you—you know something about what Garamond is said to signify.  Loyal, stubborn.  Capricious, occasionally.’

‘Hm.’

‘And neither of us know anyone who might fit that description.  Who, in a fit of poetry, might think that about our Dex at first sight.’

‘Nope.  No one.’

Shit.

‘Well, he’ll be here tomorrow night.  You should maybe consider talking to him.  If you think the pieces all fit.  If you remember what you thought first about him.  If you want, I suppose.  Can’t decide that bit for you.  Can’t force you to anything, either.’

‘Fortunately for me.’

‘I meddle because it’s efficient, Nursey.’

Nursey made a vague noise, and Chowder was kind enough to drop the subject.

* * *

Later, if he claimed to remember anything more detailed than the barest skeleton of the drive to New York, William knew he would be lying.  There was road; there were cars.  Trees and plants and sky on the periphery.  And the incessant roaring of the blood pounding in his ears.

It was just Nurse and Chowder, he told himself—told his overquick heart and his racing thoughts.  Well—his least helpful self added—them and Nursey’s mom, whom he’d seen once from a distance.  Who’d probably heard every negative report on him Nursey’d had to give for two years now.

Dex followed his phone’s googled directions beneath the haze of his anxiety until he was well within the New York city limits.  From there, he pulled up the instructions Nursey had emailed him under the subject “Google will lie to you once you’re off the highway.”  The directions led him through a very well kept-up park and, after a complicated series of turns, to an immense house on a street narrow enough that street parking seemed dubious.  Unsure what to do, Dex turned a corner onto a bigger street, pulled over, and texted Nursey.

 **Me:** Where do I park?

 **Derek Nurse:** Pull through the driveway.  If there’s a blue Porsche there, Darlene’s home.  If there’s any other car, call me and we’ll figure it out.

Feeling conspicuous and obviously out of place, Dex followed Nursey’s instructions.  The driveway, once past the screen of trees on the one side and the house on the other, opened up in a demonstration of wealth that would once have reduced Dex to snapping.  He sat in his truck for a minute once he’d parked, focusing on his breathing.

 **Me:** Ok to use the back door?  Should I go around to the front?

 **Derek Nurse:** OMG Poindorkster.  Pick a door that cal lsou tto you and use it.

 **Derek Nurse:** We’ll be home in a couple hours.  Def in time for the game.

Well, at least he’d made Nursey laugh.  Pulling himself together—ignoring the ways it was far too like Nursey pulling on his mantle of chill—Dex got out of his truck and went to knock on the back door.  A minute or so later, as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, Dex heard footsteps inside.

The door opened and Dex looked down into the evaluating gaze of Nursey’s mom—Ms. Miller, he was pretty sure?  She was pretty obviously his mom, too.  They had a similar facial structure, although her nose was broader and her skin a darker brown.  After a silent moment, she stepped back with a grace Nursey could only muster on the ice and motioned him inside.

‘You must be Dex.  Derek told me to expect you this afternoon.’

‘Yes, ma’am.  William Poindexter.  Thanks for letting me stay in your house.’

Nursey’s mom took the hand he offered in a firm handshake, maintaining eye contact as if she expected him to try to assert dominance or something equally stupid while shaking her hand.  Her eyes were dark brown, and as discomfortingly focused as when Nursey was fully engaged with something.

‘Of course—Derek’s friends are always welcome here.  And he did invite you, so.  Here—sit.  Can I get you something to drink?  I hope you had an okay drive down.  From Maine, right?’

William perched on the indicated stool, pulled a bit out from the open space under a part of the massive island in the center of the kitchen.  It had a bar sink, and a smattering of kitchen appliances stood on the cold granite surface.  Probably a second fridge underneath it, by the sink, William figured.

‘Yes.  From just outside Waldoboro. Just water would be great, thanks.  Drive wasn’t bad—unremarkable.  Glad Nursey—Derek—gave me instructions for getting here from the highway.’

That finally got a laugh out of her, although it could have been at his expense.  A glass of water appeared at his elbow—crackling ice and what looked like bubbles strewn throughout the inside of the glass itself.

‘Ah.  Derek sent you through the park, then.’

‘Yeah, it seemed well maintained—pretty—as I drove through it.  Can’t say I had the opportunity to pay it huge amounts of attention, though.’

‘Derek would forget that you’d be driving, and so unable to enjoy it, yes.’  She paused, and William could almost see her considering lines of questioning.  Nurse hadn’t mentioned what kind of lawyer she was, but she definitely didn’t seem the type confined to back rooms and writing.  ‘You’re majoring in computer science?’

‘Yes, ma’am.  With minors in computer and electrical engineering.’

‘Sounds like a lot of classes.’

‘Yes, but not as many as you might think.  There’s some overlap between all three of them, and a lot of overlap between the minors.  I have open spots for my distribution requirements and a pretty reasonable number of electives outside all that.  The electrical engineering is kinda a hedge, in case CS stops being a stable sort of employment.’

‘Very practical of you.’

‘I have to be.  Ma’am.  My scholarship covers a lot of the costs, but student loans have wicked high interest, and I’d like to be able to pay them back sooner over later.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

William was unsure what part of his statement she had heard about, and whether generally or from one of Nursey’s… reports.

‘Sorry to interrupt the flow of conversation, Ms. Miller, but—where would I find a bathroom?’

Ms. Miller pointed out one of the doors from the kitchen.

‘Along the hallway there on the left.  Second door.’

Once he’d escaped into the bathroom, Dex pulled out his phone.

 **Me:**   Halp!  When are you guys getting back?  I’m being interrogated.

 **Chris Chow:** interrogation?  Wow.  I didn’t get any of that.  Dunno when we’re back—we’re up at the top of the Statue of Liberty right now!

 **Chris Chow:** [close-up picture of Nursey, eyes bright and laughing, from his lips up to the tips of the green foam crown of liberty he was wearing over a Bruins cap]

 **Me:** So, just about forever.  When you get here, make sure my body gets back to Maine for burial.  Probably closed casket.

 **Chris Chow:** it can’t be that bad.  Ms. Miller was really nice!

 **Me:** she hates me, Chowder.  And is doing a very good job of letting me know I’m welcome here exactly as long as Derek says it’s fine.

 **Chris Chow:** it’ll be fine.  We’re probably heading back pretty soon.  After all, there’s a game to watch tonight!

Dex finished up in the bathroom, well aware of how long he’d been absent.  Back in the kitchen, his glass had been refilled.  Ms. Miller had two pans on the six-burner stove, and a small pile of veggies—a red onion, some celery, carrots, and an entire leek—that looked like they needed chopping.  She was whisking something in a metal bowl—a sauce of some kind, he figured.

‘Did you bring any bags, William?’

‘Yes, ma’am—should I go get those?  Or do you need help with cooking?’

‘Bring your bags inside, and then I wouldn’t say no to some help with chopping.’

‘Be right back, then.’

William left the house, and got his backpack out of his truck.  He left the other bag, with clothes sufficient for the entire summer, in the space behind the driver’s seat.  No need to bring that inside when a couple changes of clothes and toiletries could fit in his school bag.  Back inside, he set the backpack by the mat and turned back to the cutting board.

‘Do you need all of these chopped?  What size are you after for them?’

While he waited for the answer, William slipped around Ms. Miller and washed his hands to the wrists, counting under his breath.

‘That would be great.  Only half the onion.  Half-inch pieces or as near as you can get them.’

William nodded and set to work.  The pan on the burner apparently was just sitting there, waiting.  A pot had appeared in his absence, filled with water but not turned on.  There were four sizeable salmon steaks in a pan beside the stove—probably waiting to go into the preheating oven.  He chopped the carrots—first down the length, and then laterally—and repeated the process with the celery.  The leek he ran under water until no more dirt washed out, and then made that, too, smaller.  He saved the onion for last.

Ms. Miller let him work in silence.  The routine of a kitchen—of being someone’s sous chef—was relaxing, but he still couldn’t let his guard down.  The sauce that Nursey’s mom had been stirring, a thin glaze of some sort, went directly onto the salmon.

‘Once you’re done chopping, toss it all in the pan, please.’

‘Sure thing.’

Ms. Miller checked her phone.

‘Well, Derek and Chris are on their way back now, at least.  Where did you learn to cook, William?  You clearly know your way around a cutting board.’

‘Some at home, once I proved to my Ma I knew the basics.  Then she let me have free rein with her cookbooks and recipe cards.  But a lot I learned at school, from one of the guys a year ahead.  Some technique from the internet—YouTube’s pretty helpful.’

‘Resourceful.  Impressive self-motivation.  And you have an internship in California later this summer?’

‘Yeah.  There’s a formal title attached to it, but it amounts to being an IT and networking minion for a service provider out in Oakland.’

‘Sounds promising.  The Bay’s an expensive place to live.’

William restrained himself from rolling his eyes, just barely, at the heavy-handed implication.  It would be impolite, though, to just ask what she was after—whether she wanted him to know his place, or feel bad, or just to get him to give up all of his secrets in extremely forced small talk.  So he just kept answering questions.  They never got quite so personal as to ask, say, _how much_ his internship paid, but there was enough that she could probably find the company and figure out what their interns got paid if she was really that concerned about it.

They kept cooking, and ended up with glazed salmon over mirepoix with some tiny, almost snowflake-shaped pasta with heaps of cheese for a starch.  Ms. Miller had asked for his input, and gracefully plowed ahead when he had none.  She waited until she heard from Nursey that they were about ten minutes out before putting the salmon in the oven.

Ms. Miller’s demeanor changed entirely when Nursey and Chowder got back, although it took a bit for William to realize that: Chowder seized him in a tight hug almost as soon as he laid eyes on William.  Nursey, after hugging his mom, hung back, as if waiting his turn—and then caught Dex up in a hug, too.

‘I know your secret love of hugs, Dexington, and your pointiness will not save you.’

‘Good to see you too, Nurse.  Survived your undercover tourist adventures?  No one asked you to turn in your New Yorker card?  You have one of those, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I keep it right by my gay card.  Both of them require I see at least one Broadway show a year, but don’t worry—I won’t make you come with me.’

‘I thought you wanted me to have culture that wasn’t just bacteria?  I distinctly remember that slight being tossed around during one of your laments at how backwards I am.’

‘That does sound like something I’d say.  But we can’t this time—we’ve got game six tonight!’

‘Dinner first, Derek.  William helped me cook.’

‘Dope—that’s a shitload of veggies right there.’

‘Some of us are trustworthy with cutlery, Nursey.’

Chowder was happy and bubbly, but uncharacteristically quiet.  They all took their dinner on trays into the living room to watch the game.  It was rough game, if featuring fewer fights than the last two.  Jack accrued no penalty minutes this time, and scored twice, but it wasn’t enough.  The Falcs’ defense was clearly suffering after Tater’s injury, which left Snowy exposed at a few crucial points.

After the game, Ms. Miller left the Frogs to their devices, wishing them a good night and a good trip up to the Haus, since she likely wouldn’t see them the next day.  Once she’d gone, they conveyed their condolences and continued hope to Bitty, on the assumption that he’d relay it on to Jack, who almost certainly was not paying attention to anything except sleep, anxiety, and hockey.  And Bitty.

Then they started planning the trip up to the Haus to watch game seven.

Bitty was kind enough to let them know where the spare key was—Dex grumbled about poor security, and Chowder pointed out that there wasn’t just a lot to steal from the Haus over the summer (‘Yeah—who, but you, Chowder, would want that nasty fucking couch?’).  Chowder made them all retire early, so they could actually get a properly early start. 

Dex found himself in a guest room down the hall from the one Chowder’d been using for the time he’d been here.  It was a nice room.  Looked out between some of the trees in the front yard onto the road and the nearby houses.  It featured thick, soft carpet and seafoam green paint on the walls that matched the stupidly comfy sheets.  There was an oil painting on one wall in an unclear style, but it looked like it might be a plane coming out of a cloudbank. 

The other walls featured some photos of the Nurses—Derek and Ms. Miller and a dour-looking white guy who Dex assumed to be Mr. Nurse.  There was one of a younger Derek at a podium, caught in a moment where his eyes were flashing, hand out to the side as if keeping meter.  A poetry reading, maybe?  Nursey was in each of the pictures.  Dex felt awkward, realizing that—like he was prying into a part of Nursey’s life that he didn’t have access permissions for.

They drove out the next morning, under Chowder’s direction.  He made coffee for himself and Dex, as well as tea for Nursey.  Then he started pounding on doors to let them know that there was caffeine waiting for them downstairs and they really needed to get their asses up.

It wasn’t an eventful drive.  Just the Frogs chirping each other and hanging out.  Dex drove.  Chowder called shotgun and mediated the music so everyone was at least agreeable about it.  Nursey lounged in the cab’s backseat, such as it were.  Bags were piled under seats and in the back where Nursey wasn’t sitting.  They stopped at a Friendly’s for lunch, and the food was low-grade diner with decent ice cream and so entirely what was expected of it.

They made it up to the Haus before rush hour.  Nursey bailed out of the back of the cab as quickly as he could.  While Dex was still stretching, he raced to the “hiding spot” for the key—a dead potted plant with a patch of obviously disturbed dirt—and shouted that he was claiming the top bunk as he sprinted inside and up the stairs.

‘Well, shit.’

‘Snooze you lose, Dex,’ Chowder responded with no trace of sympathy in his voice.

Dex picked up his bag and Chowder’s and lugged them inside and upstairs.  In Lardo’s room—their room—Nursey had one of his boxes out and was digging around in it for sheets to put on the bed he’d claimed.

The only bed in the room.

Well, not entirely true.  Lardo had left behind her camp-bed and the shitty self-inflatable camping mattress that went with it.  Dex shifted that under the lofted area of the bed.  The bottom bunk was definitely the more defensible option, at least, if Nursey still harbored intentions to drive him from the Haus.  It did leave the issue of preventing Nurse from dying to gravity, especially when drunk.  That, however, was a problem for future Dex (and future Nurse).

Nursey was luxuriating on the top bunk as if it were a feather bed in a five-star hotel.  There weren’t even sheets on it yet.  Just an old flat mattress and the pillow he’d brought up from home—he’d shoved the sheets off to the side as he rolled around on the bed.  Dex left him to that and headed downstairs.  Maybe there was a mattress hiding in the recesses of the basement.

Maybe it also wasn’t mildewed all to hell.

Chowder was in the kitchen, scrounging for food.  There wasn’t much there but peanut butter, assorted canned goods, ramen, and cock sauce.  The sriracha shelf would probably vanish next year, now that Ransom & Holster were gone.

The basement was cleaner than Dex remembered it.  Also, Ransom & Holster’s dismantled bunk beds had been stowed on a tarp—happily safe from whatever was growing on the foundation wall.  _That_ was unexpected.  Dex took out his phone.

 **Me:** So, I’m at the Haus.  Nurse, as brilliant as ever (and as defiant toward gravity) claimed the top bunk.  I’m in the basement looking for a mattress, and the only ones down here are R&H’s from the attic?  That just for storage?

 **Ollie O’Meara:** Nah bro.  Me’n Wicky r getting a queen bed delivered.

 **Ollie O’Meara:** So ur free to use the old 1s.  And since ur there is there a giant crate down there?

There was.  In an obviously swept corner by the laundry machines sat an enormous wooden crate, about five feet on a side.  There were a variety of stamped or painted-on markers strongly cautioning that the top was actually the side pointing up.  The top had also been fairly heavily reinforced.  One side listed a chandelier as its contents.  Dex briefly wondered how the fuck they’d gotten it down to the basement.  They _had_ to have constructed the crate once it was all down here.  No other way to get it back out, either.

 **Me:** You two got a christly chandelier?

 **Ollie O’Meara:** Leave JHC outta this.  Wicky & I rnt exhibitionists.  We just want a nice room.  Chandeliers for over the bed.  We could compensate u if u wanna help us by installing it.  For labor—wed reimburse materials costs.

 **Me:** Sure.  I can do that tomorrow.  Assuming there’s a place it’d be safe to hang it.  I can let you know.

 **Ollie O’Meara:** Ur swawesome dude thx! [thumbs up emoji] [fist bump emoji]

Dex was delighted to find that the mattresses had handles on their sides.  He picked the top one up and hauled it out of the basement, making sure it had no contact with the floor.  He couldn’t hear Chowder in the kitchen anymore, so he’d either given up or fixed himself something.

Realizing you were hungry while carrying a mattress was fairly inconvenient.

He had to haul the mattress nearly vertical to get it around the corner to the second floor, by which point he could hear Chowder and Nursey talking in hushed voices.  Not loud enough that Dex could make out what they were saying through the closed door.  In case it was something he shouldn’t hear, he made sure to hit all the squeaky boards on his way up.

The door to their room wasn’t quite latched, so Dex pushed it open with the mattress.  Chowder was sitting cross-legged on the camp bed, leaning back on the wall and clearly pretending it was a comfortable position.  Nursey was at Lardo’s desk, leaning back in her chair with his feet up on the desk.  A childish part of Dex had the urge to tip him back in his chair just enough to realize that his balance was precarious.  The rest of him hefted the mattress to shift his grip on it.

Nursey’s bunk had sheets on it now, and a thick eider down or puff or something giant and probably heavy, warm, and soft.

‘Battering rams already, Pointy?  I haven’t even done anything to you yet.’

‘Yet, Nursey?  Really?  Also, my options were that or try to push the door open with a foot.  Less stable, more likely to slam the door open.’

‘You coulda, like, called out to us.’

‘Didn’t want to interrupt.’

‘Like you did, just now, by appearing?  It’s chill—Chowder and I were just hanging out, talking about dinner and wondering where you’d gone.’

‘To the basement—to see if there was a mattress down there that wasn’t in horrifying shape.  The camp bed doesn’t sound like any sort of good rest.  Although, I promise to at least get your drunk ass to that after kegsters.’

Chowder stood, so Dex could change out sleeping surfaces.  Dex dug around in one of his suitcases for fitted and flat sheets before making his bed on the floor.  Once done, he flopped down onto his bed, making sure to keep his shoes off of it.

‘I’ll figure out a proper lower bunk later.  How would you feel, Nursey, about just using Ransom & Holster’s bunk beds?’

‘If you wanna put that work in, it makes no difference to me.  Certainly won’t stop you, bro.  Can we move on, though, to more important matters?’

‘Like food?’

‘Exactly, my dear Chowder.  We were talking about that when you, uh, arrived.  Chowder says he took stock of the supplies in the kitchen and its p. dire.’

Dex rolled his eyes.  He wasn’t sure whether it was at the thought of Nursey cooking anything, or else at Nursey’s need to direct, or at something else and harder to define—or admit.  Maybe just at Nursey, who could never quite help himself.

‘We could—well Ransom could—make the black hole, but I don’t really feel like debasing my taste buds.’

‘Sounds like a Stop & Shop run.  I could make us a quick pasta thing.’

‘Pasta thing, Dexy?  How descriptive.’

Dex huffed and glared half-heartedly at the underside of Nursey’s bunk.

‘Well, meat’s expensive unless we’re gonna get a broiler.  And I wasn’t gonna suggest any kind of stir-fry after Chowder’s comment.  So.  Um?’ 

Dex told himself that he didn’t know why he felt so off balance.  _That’s a lie_ , a treacherously self-aware voice replied.  _Don’t do that to yourself—just accept that you’ve failed to keep from wanting what you can’t have and get back to ignoring it.  It’d be extra shitty to use him as a rebound—and you don’t get to have that anyway.  So.  Just.  Stop._

Chowder’s hand was on his knee—Chowder was sitting beside him on his mattress-on-the-floor—a warm and gentle tether to the room they were in.  He’d gone full worry eyes.  Nursey’d said something, he’d missed it, and now they were both looking at him like one might at a smoking volcano.

‘Dex, it’s just takeout.  No need to freak out.  We’ll cover you.  If the friend economy isn’t acceptable, you can always pay us back later?’

‘Uh.  Sorry.  Sure.  What.  What did you decide on for takeout?’

‘We—didn’t?’

‘Yeah, we were waiting to see if you were gonna finish wigging out.’

‘Nursey.’  Chowder’s tone held a warning.  His thumb rubbed across Dex’s kneecap in a steady rhythm, and questions sat in his eyes.  It was all Dex could do to offer a minute shake of his head—a plea to please not ask just now.

‘Sorry.  You—okay, Pointy?’

Dex took a deep breath.  Like fully surfacing after too long underwater.

‘No.  But I will be.  I hope.  Nothing for you to worry about.  Thanks, too, for offering to cover me.  I—appreciate it.’

‘Ohhhhh Full Manners Poindexter.  Damn.  If you’re sure takeout’s fine, then you need to vote on what we’re getting.’

‘You want Thai food and Chowder wants anything but east coast Chinese, I assume?’

‘Were you listening at _all_ , dude?’

‘No.  I was distracted by my shitty goddamn brain, and I would _really_ like you to not ask further.  Please?’

Dex hated how brittle he sounded, but hoped that _that_ might, at least, get through.

‘I voted for Thai food and Chowder countered with pizza.  By now his stance on east coast Chinese food is assumed.’

‘Thai sounds fine.  Pad see ew with beef?  Like, the upper end of what you consider spiced-for-white-people.’

‘Two stars, then, Dexy.  And tell your brain, if it helps, that you don’t need to worry about this, k?  You do shit for us all the time, you know.

‘Frogpile once he’s put the order in, Dex?’  Dex nodded.  ‘Hurry up, then, and get down here, Nursey.’

Chowder flopped dramatically onto Dex, briefly driving air from his lungs.  Dex groaned about how heavy the goalie was while kicking his shoes off.  He heard Nursey descend from the lofted bunk—he actually climbed down rather than jumping—before he, too, landed on top of the pile.

‘We will squish all the bad thoughts out of you, Pointy.’

‘That worked especially well in Salem, Nurse.  But I maintain I’m not a witch.’

‘Good reference, bruh, but Giles Corey you’re not.  And we all know that witchcraft isn’t why you’re missing your soul.’

‘Really Nurse?  Going there?  Ugh.  Don’t know why I put up with you.’

‘Because Chowder’s already got you pinned, so you don’t have much option?’

‘I hate you, Nursey.’

‘Not likely.  You used my nickname.  Don’t think we haven’t figured that signal out, Dexypoo.’

Wulp—this was it.  Dex was being squished under his best friends and chirped to death.  It was the nicest form of torture.

‘Three point deduction for ripping off Holster’s nicknames for Ransom.’

‘I wasn’t aware we were keeping score.’

‘I,’ Chowder said, all smugness, ‘am _always_ keeping score.’

It was almost a shame when food arrived. 

Nursey had settled in pretty thoroughly, lying across Dex’s thighs and most of Chowder’s side.  Chowder had gradually slipped off Dex and lay kinda off-kilter from any particular surface, but he seemed comfortable enough that he wasn’t shifting around to get into a better position.  When Nursey’s phone buzzed, he seemed reluctant to dig it out of his pocket and then whined at Chowder to see if he could convince the goalie to go get their food.

‘Nursey, you’re on top of me.  You’d have to move anyway.’

‘But think of the D-man cuddling!’

‘Yeahhhhhhh no.  Get up, Derek.’

‘Ugh.  Fine.’  Nursey’s grumbling was audible all the way down the stairs.

Chowder seemed to wait until Nursey was on the main floor before rolling off Dex.

‘Really though, you okay?’

‘Eh.  Stupid brain being stupid.  More of the stuff we’ve already talked about.  Wanting what I know I can’t have—and shouldn’t even let myself want.  But here we are.  I’ll get over it.  I hope.  Thanks for making him drop the issue.’

‘Got your back, dude.  He does too, when he knows how.  You know that right?’

‘You mean when he isn’t threatening to drive me out of the Haus?’

‘Yeah—just like when you’re threatening murder even as you’re already moving to help him.’

Dex wasn’t convinced of the comparison—Nursey _might actually_ drive him from the Haus—but the sounds of creaking boards kept him from saying anything.  Nursey was extra-stompy on his way up the stairs.  And he brought plates and silverware for everyone too.

‘There’s Thai iced teas for each of us, because sugar and caffeine help all that ails you.  And you didn’t order it, Dex, so don’t bother putting it on your mental tally of what you’ve decided you owe us.’

‘You say, like you could stop him.’

Dex just made grabby-hands at the proffered drink and hoped he wasn’t blushing too fiercely.

‘Thanks, guys.’

Perhaps it might be better to let this one lie.  
You’ve proven notably difficult to impress,  
And I don’t know how to say that _you_ thought the ‘Him’  
I wear inside my sleeve.  Telling would raise questions  
(Plus, it’s known I do not handle scrutiny well);  
I want our kiss to supplant his sour memory.


	6. Chapter 6

As he descended the stairs to retrieve their food, Nursey tried not to dwell on whatever the fuck Dex had freaked out about—or, well, gone catatonic over.  An implosion, not an explosion—a negative number on the volcano scale?  It was worrying in the way of unfamiliar dangers.  Chowder seemed to know, at least to some degree, what was up.  Or had at least figured out the severity in time to keep Derek from poking landmines. 

And there it was, Nursey thought as he narrowly avoided tripping down the stairs: if you stripped the flowers from the language and sliced out the metaphors in his continual assessments of Dex, it all shortened down to danger.  Unrealized danger—potential catastrophe, close by and often at least partially self-inflicted.  _That one’s dangerous—or could be, if I let him_.

Nursey took his time getting their food.  He tipped generously and thanked the delivery woman.  The Thai iced teas came in their own little drink holder set, and the food in a bag.  Nursey stacked the drinks atop plates and grabbed a handful of silverware before heading back upstairs—making sure to tread heavily on every loose board Dex had ever warned him against.

Chowder was probably running damage control in Lardo’s room.  Or at least making sure Dex was more or less okay and had someone— _knew_ that he had someone—to talk to.  Which shouldn’t be Chowder’s job—or anyone’s _job_ , really.  Lardo would have thoughts on the difference between dragging horses to water and more standard sorts of friendship.

Dinner was a muted affair.  Dex was gracious and grateful for the takeout and the drink, particularly.  He was reserved, though—polite like he had been with Darlene.  Like he was fucking up, and aware he was fucking things up, and helpless to stop it—but at least _sorry_ about it.  Low blood sugar was a dreadful thing, the Frogs all agreed.

After dinner, Chowder decamped to his room to Skype Farmer.  Dex was finding very interesting things on his laptop, shoulders hunched in on themselves oh his bed.  Nursey was flailing at words in a notebook—he’d filled the one from Whiskey that Dex had inscribed.  Had moved on to the one Chowder’d been roped into writing a poem in. 

‘D’you want the room to yourself a while, Dex?’

‘You’re fine, Nursey.  Just—don’t expect me to be too interactive right now?’

‘Never do.  I assume you don’t wanna talk about it?’

‘You assume right.’

‘I’d listen, though, if you wanted.  Just, like, to be clear about that.’

‘I appreciate it, Nursey, but… not this one.  Not now.’

‘Open-ended offer, as long as I have the spare capacity to help.’

‘Thanks.’

They subsided back into silence, and Nursey concentrated on _not_ surreptitiously looking over at Dex to see if he was unclenching—uncurling.  He scribbled lines in the margins of the notebook, waiting to see if something usable would come.  Frustratingly, all that came to him were observations about Dex.  Nursey thanked his brain for its terrible timing and its decision to hyperfocus on the presently-impossible.  And wrote.

               []  
               When the faults in his heart and brain  
               Have already rumbled him apart  
               Well, every disaster needs a rescue effort  
               He’ll accept even your comfort, then

It needed structure, but it could be useful.  Still a bad theme to invest too heavily in just now.  Seemed as good a signal as any that he should give up for the moment.  Nursey snapped his notebook closed and stowed it in his desk—well, _the_ desk.  Another thing to figure out by summer’s end.  Maybe he could steal Bitty’s.  God knows either he _or_ Dex would use it more than their captain. 

Nursey stood and stretched, twisting his back from side to side and shaking his shoulders loose.  He might have flexed some.  For reasons.  Dex wasn’t paying attention.

‘Think I’mma go for a walk. You need anything?’

‘No.  Thanks, though.  Time.  Other things that can’t be bought.’

‘Would a hug help any?’

‘Hard to make it worse.’

‘Amazing endorsement of my hugging prowess.  C’mere.  I can’t promise it’ll be alright, but you wouldn’t believe me if I could.  And hugs are a Good.’

Dex stood, still stiff and awkward.  He held open his arms with an expression equal parts amused and resigned—possibly an improvement, but hard to say.  Could just be temporary.  Nursey stepped into his space and arranged his arms around Dex, squeezing tightly.

 _Jury’s still out: one hug might be better than none_.

Dex let go before it could get awkward.  Nursey stepped back and offered him a smirk that hopefully didn’t look forced.  As he left their room, he called out over his shoulder, not looking back to evaluate Dex’s expression.

‘Be back later, Pointy.  Don’t feel like you have to wait up.’

Dex snorted behind him.

‘Nursey—you go wandering for five hours and I’m sure as fuck going to worry.’

‘Aww, Dex—I didn’t know you cared.’

As he headed downstairs, Nursey thought he heard Dex say something about not paying attention.

Some part of Nursey felt like he was running away from the issue as he left the Haus.  Or abandoning Chowder to putting Dex back together the rest of the way.  Which might itself be a disservice to either or both of them, but nevermind that.  He took a deep breath of the thickly humid air and reminded himself that he’d tried—and asked, and offered—and that this was what friends did.  Especially Dex.  He just had to reconcile himself to the differences between Dex in life and Dex in verse.

The sun had set some time before, so Nursey walked straight to campus proper.  He kept himself to the main paths, measuring the breaths between the puddles of unreliable campus path lighting.  Even those paths were deserted: few grad programs offered any summer term classes.  Several kinds of insects filled the gloaming with a thrumming buzz—entire communities of sound, a language incomprehensible.

On the path that marked the border between quads and the Beach, there were fireflies.  Nursey took his phone out and tried to take pictures of them, but they wouldn’t stay still and the lighting turned everything horrible.  He sent the least blurry one to the Frog GC captioned with Owl City lyrics to get a rise out of Dex.  Chowder sent an eye-rolling emoji; no response from Dex.

Nursey took a lap around the Pond.

As Nursey walked back up Jason Street, he thought he heard some distant party.  It soon became apparent, though, that the too-loud pop-punk was coming from the Haus.  Chowder and Dex were in Lardo’s—their—room, but the music was pour from Chowder’s speakers through the bathroom.  Chowder was shout-singing along, jumping up and down in a genre-inapt one-man mosh pit.  Dex seemed like he was actually trying to sing along—assisted karaoke.

Nursey leaned against the doorframe and watched for a moment—he was quite sure no one had heard him come in, given the volume.  The song ended, and there was a brief moment of Dex’s voice carrying the tail end of the repeated chorus ( _‘no it’s nooooooot what it seems/ it’s just what you think it is’_ ) one more iteration than necessary before the next song came one—from that one album Dex seemed to play whenever he was homesick or sad.

Dex flopped down on his bed—and caught sight of Nursey before he started to sing.  Nursey hoped that wasn’t why he didn’t.  Chowder grinned at Nursey, failing to bounce along to the slower, almost morose song.  Nursey tried not to laugh at how earnest his failure was.

‘Chowder.  Bro.  Give it up—Guster isn’t fit for moshing, no matter how hard you try.’

‘You’re not the boss of me, Dex!’

‘True enough, but you two are headed into noise complaint territory at this volume,’ Nursey half-yelled.

Chowder ducked into his room and cut the volume.

‘Better?’

‘Yeah, bruh.  Don’t need to shout now.’

‘Having a party in my absence?’

‘Sometimes singing is best done with the music loud enough to cover up your vocal sins, Nurse.’

‘You were doing pretty well with the end of that last song, dude.’  Nursey plopped into the chair at the desk.  ‘Wise of you to keep that secret until Holster graduated.’

‘Yeah, that was just part of the reason.’

‘You can sing to me anytime, though, Dexy.’

Dex scowled, but with little force.

‘Unlikely.  But I’ll take it under advisement.  Have a good walk?’

‘Yeah, dude.  All kinds of insect life going on outside and not a human to be seen.  It was mad peaceful.  Did you see the fireflies I sent you?’

Dex looked at his phone—and saw, with obvious surprise, that he’d missed Nursey’s text.

‘Nope.  Missed that.  Those glowing spots are fireflies?  Good thing you labeled your picture for us.’

 

Nursey was the last one awake the next morning.  The Frogs’ shower was running.  He could smell coffee and bacon.  Rubbing his eyes, he climbed down from bed and headed to the kitchen.  Lardo’s room was gonna be better than the attic most of the year, he figured, as he noticed the temperature drop even from his top bunk.  Made a mental note to get a box fan or two—maybe one of those Vornado fans that’d circulate the whole room’s air.

Rifling through his suitcase, Nursey came up with a tank top, and threw it on before going downstairs.  Dex might have delicate sensibilities.  He might be projecting his hopes that Dex had a shirt on, too.  No need to add to his trials immediately—it was too early and he hadn’t had caffeine.

Dex—who either hadn’t yet showered or had long enough ago that his hair had dried—was in the kitchen, in shorts, one of his presumptively witty coding t-shirts, and one of Bitty’s aprons.  There was French toast, bacon, and coffee.  If it wouldn’t get him punched, Nursey would have kissed him.

‘Morning, sleepy.  Leave me some bacon.  Chowder’s already had his fill, and this is all we bought.  There’s juice in the fridge.’

‘Wait, you’ve been to Stop & Shop already?’

Nursey plated French toast and bacon, drowned it all in syrup, got silverware out of the dishwasher, and set that all down at the table.  Then he got himself some juice—orange, extra pulpy—and sat down at the table himself.  As instructed, he’d left Dex about half of the remaining bacon.  The French toast was pretty damn tasty.

‘Nah—that was last night while you were out enjoying nature in the dark.  We got just enough for today’s meals, cuz no matter what happens we’re not having breakfast here tomorrow.  Don’t worry, though, there’s plenty of snacks for the game.’

Dex turned the stove off, filled his own plate, and sat down.  He pushed a mug of coffee toward Nursey.  Nursey grabbed it, nodding thanks, and took a long pull.  It had the right amount of sugar in it.

‘How long’ve you been up?’

‘Eh.  Couple hours.  Ran, showered—you were still snoring—dubbed about on the internet with coffee until Chowder came down looking hungry.  Started cooking.  Was gonna go find the key to the volleyball house—Farmer told us where it was, got us permission and everything—to get a desk that’s apparently spare.  Chowder and I are also gonna haul Ollie and Wicks’ chandelier up from the basement.  Which.  I _still_ have no idea how it got down there or why.  Gotta fucking uncrate it to get it upstairs again.’

Nursey let Dex rant while he focused mostly on eating.  It took him a moment to react, then, to the whole _chandelier_ thing.

‘Sorry.  Chandelier?’

‘Yeah—they ordered it from god knows where and had it shipped here, and by some dubious miracle it ended up crated in the basement.  The crate can’t _fit through the door to the basement_ while all constructed.  Dunno why they didn’t just have it taken up to their room. But Ollie said they’d pay me to install it.  That way they can just construct the bed straight away.’

Something wasn’t adding up.  Nursey needed more coffee.

‘So you’re saying.  That there’s a chandelier in the basement.  And you’re being paid to haul it to the attic and… hang it?  Over space where a bed isn’t.  Wait—they’re not using the bunk beds?’

‘You need more coffee.  It’s right there, dude.  Drink up.’

‘Rude.’

‘Accurate.  And yeah.  That’s why I asked yesterday if you’d be cool using the bunk beds.  Cuz Ollie and Wicks are gonna be sharing a queen.’

‘Wait, for real?’

‘You’re surprised?  They literally shared a bed on every roadie for the last two years.  They roomed together last year—and from what Ransom said, they just pushed the beds together.  If they’re not already engaged, they’re probably just waiting for graduation.  So, yeah.  Today’s turned into a work day.  What all do you have planned?  Assuming you’re still planning on not helping shift the bunk beds.’

Upstairs, the shower shut off.

‘Nah.  I’ll help with those.  I may have been being contrarian last night.’

Nursey didn’t look up, but it wasn’t necessary for him to get a sense of Dex just _drooping_.  That had apparently been the wrong thing to say.

‘You might have been.  Do—do you still plan to harass me into leaving the Haus?  If so, lemme know so I can put aside some of my internship money to prepare for your probable success.’

‘No?’  So _that_ might be a problem.

‘…I see.’

‘I thought we’d established that before the end of school?  And that it was a joke now?’

‘We… did?  I see.’  Dex turned his attention back to his food.  He didn’t look up when Nursey spent a minute just _looking_ at him.  St. Helens holding his breath. 

‘So—it’s a bad joke, then.  I’ll stop.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a joke, Nursey.  It feels like you’re trying to put me in my place.  To make me feel like my living here is conditional on—I dunno.  Keeping you happy with me?’  Dex took a deep breath and made an abortive gesture with one hand.

‘No—fuck.  That’s not how it’s meant at all.  I—’

‘How’s it meant, then?’  Dex didn’t yell—it came out more a strangled, frustrated statement.  Like he was holding himself back from yelling.  ‘I know I have shit to work out, but I don’t want to be, like, beholden to your whims?  No—whims isn’t right, but.  Like.  Your approval?  I want to make this whole thing work.’

‘To be very clear: my approval is irrelevant to your living in the Haus.  No contingencies or anything.  I have no plans to go full boarding school prank war on you.  That stupid quarter sealed both our fates, and we’ll survive this.  It’ll be fun, even.  So… we good?’

‘Yeah.  Sorry.  Um.’

Chowder clattered down the stairs.

‘Dex!  Caitlin told me where the key is!  And that there’s a dolly in their basement we can use.  When do you wanna head over?’

‘Now’s good, C—lemme get my dishes rinsed.

Dex stood.

‘I’ll take care of them, Dexy.  You cooked for us.’

Nursey stabbed Dex’s left-behind bacon across the table and moved it over to his plate, where he proceeded to dredge it through his syrup puddle.  Chowder rolled his eyes at him, grinning.

‘Thanks, Nursey.’

‘TBH—I wanted to steal some of your bacon, too.’

‘Good of you to admit the obvious.  I’ll see you later—we’ll figure out the bunk beds once the desk’s in the Haus.’

‘Bye Nursey!’

Nursey waved as they left.  He finished his breakfast and debated going for a run.  It wasn’t beastly out yet—and he hadn’t showered yet—so he figured he might as well.  He strapped his phone to his arm, cranked up the music—Doomtree, Kendrick, Frank Ocean—and took off with a flood of words in his ear enough to drown out the ones swirling through his head.  Nursey knew it was pure avoidance, but he’d do what he had to.

It was gross out by the time he got back, and so was Nursey.  He hustled up to his room and, once there, started undressing for a shower.  As he wrapped himself in a towel, it occurred to him that he wasn’t living alone anymore—fortunately, Dex wasn’t there.  Nursey took a leisurely shower.  As he was getting dressed again, he heard muffled clattering and scraping downstairs, along with what he assumed to be Dex and Chowder coordinating the moving of the desk.

Once dressed, Nursey joined the other Frogs downstairs.  Or, at least, at the foot of the stairs—that being how far they’d shifted the desk.  It didn’t have its drawers in, but was otherwise one of the standard Samwell-dorm-issue desks.  Nursey wondered how long it had been in the volleyball house, and whether it had started its life in a dorm room.  Dex and Nursey had just finished flipping it upside-down.

‘Need help?’

‘Couldn’t hurt.  We can have one person lead and two follow, supporting the drawer-side.’

‘Let’s let Chowder lead the way.’

‘Just don’t slip and bring it crashing down on the both of us, Nursey.’

‘Ye of little faith.’

The three of them hoisted the desk, and Chowder started going backwards up the stairs.

‘At your pace, Chowder.  No need to rush.’

They got it to the corner and had to shift it to nearly upright to maneuver through the bend.  From there, though, it was smooth sailing.  Dex had opinions on where to put the desks in relation to each other, but agreed that it didn’t matter until they got Lardo’s lofted bed swapped out for the bunk beds.

They discussed it on the way to the basement—they’d keep the ladder for Nursey’s use, but Dex was pretty sure that Lardo’s bed was somehow longer than the bunk beds.  So they had to bring up both metal parts—rails—rather than just one for Dex.  Chowder declared he was taking all the end-pieces, so Nursey and Dex each took one set of rails.

Dex declared Nursey wasn’t strictly necessary for the construction/deconstruction if he didn’t want to help, so Nursey just sat at his desk, now in a corner behind the bed.  He volunteered to take the old bed back down so Dex could get started on moving the chandelier. 

By the time all the home improvement was done, Dex had taken another shower and it was time to get settled in for Game Seven.  Dex had been right—there was plenty of food.  It was a good game and a tense one, with all the hopes and expectations riding on it.  The Frogs were sandwiched all together on the toxic couch, watching.

And then suddenly, just there on the ice—on the TV—Jack and Bitty were kissing.  On replay—on loop.  What a baller way to come out.  Assuming Bitty wasn’t out to his family.  Dex was tense beside him, but a glance over revealed it to be some combination of worry and awe rather than any negative reaction.  Worry that he wouldn’t be able to do anything about.  How very Dexly.

The team group chat started to light up—mostly SMH alums, at first.  They quieted down and the rest of the team took up the slack, congratulating Jack (or Jack and Bitty, to the degree anyone was saying anything directly about the kiss)—and then the pictures of Jack and his Hausmates came rolling in.  By the time Nursey gave up on following the flow of the groupchat, Dex had already tidied up the snacks and grabbed a backpack with a change of clothes and toiletries.  Chowder tossed him some clothes to stow in there.  Nursey got his own to add to it.

They made the trip to Providence in record time.

 

Nursey narrated the group chat messages on the drive down.  Chowder, sitting in the back, took dictation for Dex on Dex’s phone, because he refused to text while driving—but had important things to say.  Apparently.  Those at the game were celebrating with the team somewhere.  Lardo sent a picture of Jack spraying champagne around.  Holster acquired a giant inflatable duck somewhere.

Jack arranged for them to be let into his apartment before everyone descended on it.  Dex suggested they get food, before going into the kitchen to get several crusts worth of pie dough out of the freezer to be ready for Bitty.  That suggestion turned into an open order for sandwiches, which Dex dictated to Nursey as he called it in—Holster ordered six for himself.  Chowder went out to pick them up in Dex’s truck, and came back with solo cups and blue and white balloons.

Nursey remembered Jack arriving—Bitty under one arm, Tater using the other for support (a complicated dance to get them all three in the door when they didn’t seem to want to separate).  Tater was carrying the Cup, somehow, while on crutches.  The Cup’s minder looked more bored than worried.  Nursey remembered trying to pry details out of the guy, like what the craziest parties he’d been to had been like.   SMH members and Falcs alike spilled in behind, and the atmosphere was, in a word, lit.

Bitty was thrilled that Dex had been so kind, hon, to prep for his baking spree.  Tater shouted for blueberry.  He kissed Jack and vanished into the kitchen for a few minutes, until pies were in the oven and food was arriving and guests needed hosting or whatever.

Nursey reconstructed the rest of the night in fits and starts and images.  He had, oddly, been the Frog closest to sober, but that only said so much.  Chowder spent a solid minute gushing about how swawesome Snowy was and his saves in the second period and omygoshcanwegetaselfietogether?  Dex fell mostly into bartending and pie-serving.  He eventually convinced Bitty to enjoy the party for a while, that he could make at least a couple serviceable pies that people wouldn’t notice weren’t as good because they’d be drunk.

Jack’s neighbors showed up, but they just wanted to join in the party.

Later—hours and drinks both—Nursey was happily buzzed and holding down a wall near the hallway that led to the bedrooms, just observing.  Holster had lost his shirt in a wrestling match with two hockey players and Shitty, but was clutching the giant rubber duck proudly, declaring it his favorite falconer.  Someone had poured a schwasted Chowder onto the end of the couch Tater and his leg weren’t occupying, and both of them were trying to get Dex to deliver them more pie.  It wasn’t difficult for them to convince him—Chowder, especially, just had to ask nicely and make even the slightest of sad expressions—and pie would appear by Dexly magic.

By then Dex was very, _very_ drunk.  And somehow still producing pie.  But he kept bringing Nursey pie, along with a one glass of water for every drink Nursey had.  Seemed to know pretty much exactly where he was at most points, despite being drunk enough that his accent was thicker in its way than Bitty’s (was he _aiming_ for blackout?  That was a question never to ask).

Nursey was slow rolling his drinking so he didn’t do anything stupid.  Well.  Anything irrevocably stupid.  So he aimed for simmering drunk rather than a metaphorical rolling (stumbling) boil.  Shitty roped him into camera duty after he’d confiscating it from Jack.  Nursey was briefly proud he remembered to set the SLR to autofocus.  A while later—having taken snapshots of people’s drinks, a Rubbermaid container of now misnamed tub juice, and hyper-close-ups of as many faces as stood still for him to take their pictures—he handed it off to one of the Falcs.  Thirdy, maybe?  Whoever it had been, he’d boasted of being able to take just as good and artsy pictures as Jack’s.

There was an extended pong interlude using Jack’s kitchen table, during which Nursey realized he’d lost track of Dex.  Not that he was trying to keep track of him; blackout or not, he always maintained that he could take care of himself.  Nursey couldn’t escape, though, with SMH’s pong-honor at stake (and Lardo using him as a human shield to absorb the beer levied against their team.  Between them, Lardo added another notch to her belt of pong victories against NHL players.

Later, on his way out toward the balcony—having navigated the living room, packed with bros dancing to divas (Bitty had gotten ahold of the playlist)—Nursey caught a glimpse of Pointy lying mostly on one of the beds in the guest room with his head on Lardo’s lap.  He was giggling and seemed to be gushing nonsense at her as she appeared to be _braiding his hair_ —and he was not just allowing it but seemed to be enjoying it.  Lardo looked up, saw Nursey, and jerked her head in a ‘move along’ gesture.

It was almost chilly, at least by comparison to inside, out on the balcony.  As his eyes adjusted to the dim, brightening sky, Nursey saw Jack on one of the chairs, arm protectively around the Cup.  He nodded at Nursey, smiling a bit hazily, but didn’t seem inclined toward chatting.  They sat there, silently sharing the space, as the sun broke the horizon.

Bitty broke the moment, eventually, by coming out to drag his boyfriend toward bed.  Jack took the Cup back inside with him, handing it off to the caretaker as he went.  Nursey stayed out on the balcony for some time—he was almost sober, he was pretty sure, by the time he ambled back in through the aftermath of the party.  One of the guest rooms had been commandeered by a mass of SMH.  Nursey saw some spare blankets—spare meaning sloughed off one of his sleeping teammates—so he shucked his shoes and made himself a burrito out of them, falling asleep to the chorus of his teammates’ snores.

* * *

They were two hours west of New York City when Chowder broached the topic. 

Dex knew he’d been waiting.  There hadn’t been a chance to talk during the initial morning madness of putting Jack’s apartment back together and figuring out who’d brought enough clothes or toiletries or whatever.  The presser had been at some ludicrous hour—that is, sometime before noon—and most of SMH had just finished struggling toward achieving humanity by the time Jack, Bitty, and Tater got back (but at least the apartment was habitable again—Dex didn’t know what had happened to the inflatable duck).

The drive from the Haus, where they retrieved their suitcases, to New York—with Nursey _right there_ —was clearly not the time.  Nursey spent the drive chirping him about his attempt to cut Tater off from pie.  Bitty had overridden him, naturally, and Holster had been his usual loud self.  But there really had only been so much pie left and no one there wanted to make a supply run.  Dex hadn’t _known_ that Jack and Thirdy had already been sent out.  The Frogs hadn’t left Providence until 2:30, laden with a cooler full of provisions from Bitty.

They dropped Nursey off at his empty house, exchanged hugs, and got back into the car.  They still had a _long_ day of driving ahead of them.  Dex still wasn’t sure that a cross-country trip in a week was a good plan (but slower than that seemed a waste of time?), to say nothing of the four days allotted on the way back.  Chowder—Chris?  He should probably start practicing that now—took a shift driving, and Dex promptly passed out.  The night before had not offered much in the way of sleep, comfort, or comfortable sleep.  He knew Chowder had noticed him wake up when Chowder tried to surreptitiously switch the playlist from Blink-182 to Lost and Gone Forever.  Chowder was _fully_ aware that Dex considered that a comfort album, especially when homesick.

Dex tried to stretch in the car seat.  All he could really do was twist his back in hopes of popping a couple vertebrae—there was nothing to do for his ass falling asleep.  Chowder waited until he settled before talking.

‘Pennsylvania goes on forever, Dex.’

‘Lemme know when you need me to take another shift.  What’s our destination for tonight?’

‘My mom booked us a room in Maumee, Ohio.  If we only speed a little bit, we’ll get there around two.’

‘So one-thirty if we go at the speed of traffic?’

‘If we eat in the car, yeah.’

‘I don’t think we should eat in the car.’

‘Shouldn’t or don’t want to?’

‘Don’t want to.  Also, I vote we save the pie for breakfast.’

Chowder nodded agreement, staring at the road ahead.  The silence held for a few minutes before he nodded to himself like he did at the start of games.

‘So.  I said we weren’t done talking about it, and you agreed.  Reluctantly.  Nursey’s not around anymore to potentially interrupt or hear, so you can’t use that as an excuse to not talk.  So we’re doing this.  Unless you really don’t want to, but I think it’d be good.’

‘Ughhhhhhh.  Fine.’

They drove in silence for several more minutes.

‘Sooo..?’

‘I’m worrying about Bitty.  He let his phone die.  And pretended it was fine—just told me to leave it on the counter when he left for the presser.’

‘Plausible, and I’m not saying it’s not what you’re worrying about right now, but there was no presser to be had—or any drained-battery phone to wonder at—when you pushed off part one of this conversation because Nursey might come back from his walk.’

‘I mean, he apologized yesterday.  Said the shit about driving me outta the Haus was a bad joke.  That he didn’t know I wasn’t treating it like a joke.  As if I should have known.  And, like, it’s good to know.  Except.’

‘Except what?’

Chowder waited, letting the silence stretch after his prompt.  For his part, Dex fidgeted with the him of his shorts.  There was a thread loose, and he tried both to pull it free and to pull the fabric of the shorts such that it would draw the thread back through.  Neither effort was particularly successful.

‘It’s dumb.’

‘Maybe?  But you’ve gone all squirrelly about it, so.  If it is dumb, it’s both that and a big deal.  You don’t tend to worry about things without at least thinking there’s a reason, though.’

 ‘I just—ugh.  I wish I had all of his words.  Then I might be able to parse this shit out—the anxiety from the worry from the constraints of Maine’s ruggedly toxic masculinity.  Thanks for that, Shitty.’  Dex kissed his fingertips and brushed them against the roof of the cab.  Chowder nodded slightly, with a small smile.  ‘I just worry whether this truce is only as good as all the other ones.  Whether I’ll piss him off just by proximity and leave him with no recourse except to badger me into leaving.  Because I know that no one would choose me over him for living in the Haus.  You might remain neutral, but Bitty only cares to the extent that I’m useful in the kitchen.  Well, that I keep his appliances running.  Otherwise I’m pretty replaceable, too.’

‘That’s not just one thing.  And it’s not dumb—at least not in the way you’re making it seem.  First, you’re giving Nursey too much credit for the power of his words.  I guarantee he’s just as confused by a bunch of this stuff as you are.  It’s a pretty sure thing you’ll piss each other off.  Especially living together.  But we can get you two started on a roommate contract and, like, hang it on the back of your door so you both see it whenever you have to leave the room.  And I have no plans to choose either of you over the other.  I might have to bonk your heads together, but I’ll do that with _relish_.  If it’s needed.’

Dex gave a weak chuckle at that thought.

‘Also, give Nursey more credit.  Even if he gets angry with you, he might just want to be left alone a while—even though that’s more your thing than his—not to drive you off.  He fills in your part of the conversation sometimes when you’re not there.  Like down to specific commentary.  Not just your general allusions to there being poetry in something.’

‘So he’s better at it than me.  I get it.’

‘No, you don’t.  Clearly.  Like.  How many other people does he actually get angry at?  Like, arguing and shouting and all worked up?  How many people get that from him rather than a retreat into civilized repartee and detached savagery in casual commentary?’

‘You, but mostly about other people—probably including me, if I’m not around.  Shitty.’  Dex paused for a second, thinking.  Couldn’t come up with anyone else.  ‘No one else really comes to mind.  He gets loud and animated with Holster, but that’s different.  Probably because Lardo would raise an eyebrow and shut him down without even having to say anything.’

‘And you.  What do you think that says about you, Dex?’

Dex shrugged.  He didn’t know where Chowder was going, but couldn’t see it going anywhere good or useful.  Didn’t want to say that, though.

‘That I’m unusually good at getting under his skin or through his defenses or whatever metaphor he might want us to use?’

‘True but not relevant.  The answer I was going for was that he trusts you enough—feels comfortable enough around you—to actually get properly angry.  As to you being easily replaced, you have to know that’s not true.  There’s all the work you do on the Haus.  There’s the cooking you’ll probably do a lot of once we have to force Bitty to work on his thesis, which you know he’ll want to avoid at all costs.  There’s making sure the waffles know they have a place on the team—we all know you have strong opinions on that one.  And now you’re in Ransom and Holster’s position since they’ve graduated.  Can you imagine anyone else likely to repeat Jack’s foolishness by going out in a snowstorm to make sure the new frogs are all prepared and okay?’

Dex wished he didn’t blush so easily.  He shrugged again, unsure how else to react to Chowder’s mini-rant.  Especially once he moved on to suggesting that Dex had a role to fill involving either Ransom and Holster or _Jack_.  As if he were important.

‘You’re bad at dealing with compliments—to the point it’s often more trouble than the compliment’s worth to us—so none of this probably gets brought up around you.  Or, if it is, you ignore it or brush it off and never actually pay any attention to it.  Like you’re trying to right now.  But _right now_ you’re my captive audience.  I can get Caitlin on the phone if you need me to.’

‘Not just now—I think Pennsylvania has hands-free laws or something.  And I won’t call her for you.  I know how she answers the phone when you call.’

‘I’ll just put her on speaker phone.  But you’re avoiding the point.  You do belong on the team and in the Haus.  I think so.  Bitty thinks so.  Nursey thinks so.  Now stop being stupid about that and navigate us to a bathroom.  And coffee.’

Dex did as instructed.  He switched with Chowder at the Wawa and took over the music.  He put on one of his drown-out-difficult-thoughts mixes—AFP, Chevelle, APC, and so on.  Chowder played some kind of game on his phone and left Dex to the quiet work of driving.  They had a brief conversation as they were heading into Pittsburgh about Chowder having figured out lunch plans with his sister, who’d meet them in Rochester, MN.

They arrived, exhausted, in Maumee at 2:15 am, because they’d decided dinner was more necessary than sleep. Chowder might have signed his future children over to the desk clerk for all the attention he paid to what was put in front of him.  Room keys in hand, the pair of Frogs passed out almost instantaneously upon getting into their beds. 

Some five hours later, as their alarms blared, they regretted that choice—but they had to get up: they had lunch plans four states over. 

Lunch ended up being dinner, because four states was too ambitious, and Dex finally got to meet Andrea.  Her presentation was as bright as her brother, but as thrifted and frivolously elegant as Nursey—no one needed a scarf, however lightweight that silk was, in a Minnesotan summer.  She shared Chowder’s chirping style (sharp, but smiling), and informed Dex that she’d find out if he shirked on the care instructions she’d left for her stuffed animals.  Dex was only ninety percent sure she was shitting him.

Dinner was a good break, but they still had miles to cover before their destination for the night.  They got to Mitchell, SD late enough that their reserved room had been resold on an assumption that they would not be taking it.  There was one room left—the only issue was that the room had one queen bed.  The night clerk was apologetic—she went so far as to offer to call other nearby hotels—but Dex just told her there was no need.  They’d figure it out.  That night, instead of calling home, Dex just texted ‘Leen to let her know they’d gotten in safely.

He barely noticed the drab carpet and the dim motel hallway lighting during the trudge to their room.

Once in the room, Dex whipped his shoes off and planked forward into a faceplant on the middle of the bed.  Chowder—properly—interpreted that as a signal that he had the first turn in the bathroom.  When Dex had not moved by the time Chowder emerged from the shower, he poked Dex in the side.  Dex flailed, which triggered Chowder’s attack mode.  Dex jackknifed to avoid the goalie’s tickling fingers, trying both to defend himself and to not to actually yell at stupid o’clock in the morning in a motel room.

Chowder laughed riotously until Dex rolled right off the edge of the bed to escape.

‘You okay?’

‘Now that I’m not being _murdered_ , I’m fine.’  Dex grinned through his grumbling, an attempt to show he didn’t _really_ mind.  He got up off the floor and stretched—batting Chowder’s hand away as it strayed too close to his flank.  With a small grunt of effort, he went and brushed his teeth.

When he got back out of the bathroom, Chowder was in the bed, with his side’s light on.  Dex looked at him—an undeniably cute guy waiting for him to get into bed and just _go to sleep_ —and he was hit with a sudden pang of want.  Not for Chowder, who was admittedly hot—but also confirmed as not his soulmate ( _and dating Farmer_ , he chided himself, shoving aside treacherous thoughts of polyamory and adding them to the pile of thing he couldn’t _consider_ wanting).

‘It’s just me, Dex.  Get in bed and sleep.’  Chowder was too tired to be soft, but his bluntness somehow felt safer to Dex just then.

‘I know that, Chowder.  I just—.’  He pulled back the covers and fell into the bed.  Chowder chuckled quietly on his side.  ‘My stupid brain reminded me it was originally gonna be me driving west with Nursey.  With Nursey, too, anyway.  And I feel like I’m still fucking up.  Like there’s no option except to fuck up with him, when my dumb fucking heart flips when I think of him most times and he’d be fucking dumb to want me.  Who’d want someone they label dangerous right off the bat?’

Without waiting for Chowder’s answer, Dex rolled facedown onto the nearest pillow and groaned.  Chowder’s light clicked off.  Dex heard—and felt, as the bed shifted—Chowder scooch over and flop the covers over his shoulders.

‘Just tell Nursey you miss him.  Not, like now.  And maybe not in the context of having to share a bed.  Although you could tell him that.  You could even tell him you like him.’

Dex snorted into the pillow.  He rolled toward the middle of the bed, half-hoping it’d result in the comfort of physical contact without having to, like, be vulnerable enough to ask for it.

No luck.

‘You know I can’t do that.  He’ll treat it like a joke, or take it as ammunition for chirping.  He goes for pretty people.  Not—not me.’

‘Do you let people talk about your friends like that, Dex?  Cuz that’s my friend you’re badmouthing.’

‘I wasn’t saying bad things about Nursey!  I—’

‘No, doofus.  You.  Need a goddamn intervention for you about putting yourself down, I swear to god.  Consider this notice.  Now go to sleep.’

Dex fell asleep wondering at the bed’s spaciousness—they could probably have slept all three frogs in a fairly comfortable pile, if it had come to it.  If Nursey had come on the roadtrip.

He woke up late the next morning, with light seeping in through the double layer of drawn blinds and pulled curtains.  Chowder was half-flopped over him, and the sleeping goalie seemed to treat any movement as behavior to be quelled by intensified cuddling.  The amount of light meant that it was well past when his alarm would have gone off—which meant goalie interference.

Poking Chowder accomplished nothing.

‘You’re normally a morning person, Chow.  Did you just decide to turn that off today?  Like you did with my phone alarm?  How did you even know the code.’

Chowder, apparently just conscious enough to register the question, mumble-whispered ‘seen you enter your sister’s birthday all the time, Dexy.  Now lemme sleep.’

Dex couldn’t help but bust up laughing at that.  Chowder covered Dex’s mouth with his hand and tried to burrow in further, but Dex was awake and felt like he had to get moving.  So he started to roll toward Chowder on the assumption that there would be resistance.  When there was, Dex reversed directions and rolled them both over so that he was no longer pinned.  Free at last, he left a pouting Chowder in the pile of blankets and went into the bathroom to shower.

Chowder was still in bed when Dex emerged.  He seemed, catlike, to occupy the whole bed by situating himself in the center and simultaneously—in defiance of physics and geometry, as usual—curling up and starfishing.  He was smiling at something on his phone.  Reddit, probably, or something Farmer had sent.

‘What’s good on the internet?’

‘Very little.  It’s a terrible place.  As you know.  Was texting with Nursey’s friend Dori.’

‘The theater kid he’s spent holidays with?  You met him?’

‘Yeah.  Got into a flirting competition in a coffee shop.  Seemed at least half-serious on his side of things.’

‘D’you even like guys?’  Dex froze for a moment, registering his tone and the question he’d literally just asked.  ‘Sorry.  You don’t have to answer that.  Obviously.’

‘Prying before coffee, Dex?’  Chowder snickered at Dex’s discomfort and sleepily waved it off.  ‘I do, sometimes.  Like, dudes can be _hot_.  But that’s not enough to spark a romantic interest, like, almost ever.  If that makes sense?  Anyway, he seemed to really hope I might suddenly get another soulmark, so we traded numbers and I’ve been getting _all manner_ of blackmail material since letting him down.’

Chowder rolled over—almost off the bed, but not quite—and sat up.  He was somehow cheerful and chipper and all of it was unnatural to Dex, who had never met a morning he’d liked in his life, despite his many days up before sunrise.  As he did so, Chowder continued talking.

‘You’d like him.  He’s hilarious—has a deep-seated need to keep Nursey in his place by chirping him to death.’

‘Anything worth sharing?’

‘Yes.  And if you let us take it easy today, I might be convinced to share.’

‘You say, as if you hadn’t planned to destroy our pace by _going into my phone_ and turning my alarms off.’  Dex grumbled, but he knew it was probably the right call.  ‘Sure.  Where’s breakfast?’

The pair of Frogs hit up the dregs of the motel’s continental breakfast and checked out just under the wire.  They spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon driving through the Badlands.  Dex demanded that they park and hike around in the rocks for an hour or two, and Chowder was happy to escape the car.  Dex ensured that they both wore enough sunblock.

They sent Nursey enough pictures of rocks and clouds in the Frogs group chat that he started to retaliate with pictures of pigeons in flight, gutter puddles, and extreme close-ups of the sidewalk.

Chowder and Dex had a late lunch at Wall Drug, which Dex declared the weirdest tourist trap he’d ever seen.  Good coffee though, and the sheer _amount_ of paintings they had collected was incredible (even if there was too much focus on just how brown the _everything_ was).  They killed an hour or so there before driving so late into the night that they didn’t really get out of the car any earlier than their most intense driving day.  This time they didn’t stop for dinner, but instead subsisted on the accumulation of car snacks until they hit Gillette.

They were up when Dex’s alarms demanded it the next morning for another long drive day.  Chowder’s mom had made ambitious reservations for them in Twin Falls, but had also suggested that—if they had the energy—Yellowstone was right there.  For an extended value of right there.

This time, they didn’t get out of the car, and just drove through the park.

Dex thought it a waste, but they had a schedule.  Just getting to Yellowstone added three hours of just driving to it.  So they took turns driving and taking passenger-seat photography.  They made it to their Idaho destination before the room was resold—with dinner, before midnight.  They crashed early in preparation for a rather more leisurely drive the next day, as long as they left early enough to avoid evening traffic into the City.  Dex didn’t point out that Chowder used ‘the City’ to mean a different city than Nursey did, but with exactly the same sense of import. 

As Dex drove them into Nevada, Chowder dozed in the passenger seat.  It occurred to Dex that he was as far—at any given moment—as he’d ever been from home.  That this had been the case for days, now.  The stopped for lunch in a Denny’s that looked like it was the last gasping attempt at civilization for hours in any direction.  Dex ordered waffles and texted a picture to Nursey about the one thing they agreed on.  Chowder, knowing the argument that was coming, ordered a burger.  Because it was _lunchtime, Dex_.

Chowder took the last shift into San Francisco.  They arrived, as hoped, just before traffic was too heavy, although Dex had to take Chowder’s word for it.  He marveled, through stop and go progress, at the art installation on the suspension cables of the Bay Bridge (at how much effort—how much _money_ —had gone into putting sparkling lights on a bridge).

Eventually, after navigating onto their second city-grid and up (and down) both a hill and a ridge, Chowder parked outside a series of fancy-looking row houses with enough ornamentation and ancillary detail that they must have been _old_.  Chowder cranked the wheels toward the curb and yanked the emergency break into position.

There were stairs on the sidewalk.  There was a handrail.  They looked necessary.  Turning around, Dex looked out over the bay toward Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, with headlands in the background.  He got lost in the view until Chowder poked his shoulder and gestured toward the house on the corner.  It had a turret of sorts that seemed like it probably warped the layout of both floors, and the teal paint on the window trim should have been a clue that this house was the Chows’.  Dex took a picture of the house on a diagonal that made the sidewalk look flat and the houses crooked.

The Frogs each took their biggest bag out of Dex’s truck and trundled up the wooden staircase from the street.  The detail on the woodwork was incredible—Uncle Paul would have been fascinated.  Chowder unlocked and opened the red-orange front door onto a hallway that led back toward the rest of the house, with stairs leading up and a doorway on the right just beyond that.  There was a shoe rack and a mat immediately inside, just fucking _strewn_ with discarded shoes.  Dex picked his way to the far edge of it, trying to avoid twisting his ankle as if he were Nursey, and took his shoes off without Chowder having to prompt him.  Chowder kinda shoved shoes aside so he could make his way through, dropping his bag before taking off his shoes.

Sockfooted, Chowder called out that he’d arrived, and cheers went up from several different directions.  Dex stood behind Chowder, who seemed inclined to treat him like a net.  Moments later, a mass of people converged on the door—children from elementary to high school from one direction, and adults from two others.  Dex appreciated being goalied.

It turned out the Chows’ house included to the neighboring row house, and what Dex had thought was an exterior wall was, in fact, not.

Chowder had a child wrapped around one of his legs when he lunged forward to hug a man Dex assumed must be his father.  He was about Chowder’s height, slighter of build, with thick brows and abundance of laugh lines on his face, which just then was split into a wide smile.  The man picked Chowder up and spun him around. 

Dex was introduced to Chowder’s parents as William; Chowder’s mom cornered him into a conversation about classes and his internship and hockey and whether Chris was eating right.  A plate of food was made for him with minimal consultation and thrust into his hands with a fork that a teenager was sent into the kitchen to get.  William nibbled at the food, grateful for the fork but keenly aware, too, that he was the only adult using one.

Chris, by contrast, was passed around to various of the assembled relatives before being marched back across the party to William by a diminutive woman whose demeanor cleared a path for them.  Chowder’s expression looked like he wanted William to brace for a check.  She was introduced as Auntie Maureen, and Dex couldn’t tell if she was an aunt or a great aunt or what—it didn’t seem to matter, though.

The gentled interrogation that followed had Chris blushing as Auntie Maureen asked about Chris’s relationship with Farmer, whether William was dating anyone, and what he hoped to do with a degree in computer engineering.  It was much kinder than Darlene’s, William thought, equal parts getting-to-know-you and gossip session.  There were a few intrusive questions about Chowder, while he was _right there_ , but it was still comfortable.  Somehow the topic of his soulmark never came up, which was a mercy.

Eventually one of the aunts broke out cards and poker chips.  William begged off from playing, and instead escaped to Andrea’s room—the upstairs turret room in the corner row house.  He texted ‘Leen to let her know he’d arrives safely.  The turret was lined with a bench on which sat a number of intentionally hyper-cute stuffed animals that overstuffed to the point of being spherical.  There was little overarching theme to them—they included, for instance, a kraken, a deer, a sheep, a raincloud, and what Dex would have guessed—if pressed—was just… grass? Dex snapped a picture of them and sent it to Nursey with the caption ‘my guests for the mandatory tea parties this summer.’  Dex sent another pic of Andrea’s neatly handwritten instructions, which prompted a reply of a dozen cry-laughing emoji.

Andrea had apparently not been shitting him in the least.

Chris was up as early as ever the next morning, and all Dex wanted to do was sleep.  But apparently they were going for a run.  They trotted downhill and Chowder pointed out all kinds of pieces of his past—the corner market he’d always gone to after hockey practice in high school, the place he and Andrea had learned to fly kites with their dad.  They ended the run at a coffee shop right by the converted pier that had been Chowder’s ice before Faber.  Chowder ordered their coffees extra hot—so they’d be drinkable by the time they got back, he said.

The monster.

The hills on the way back were… unpleasant, to say the least.  And he was running while carrying coffee.  Chowder laughed when he had enough breath to, especially in response to Dex’s bitching.

Once back, they cleaned up, caffeinated, and had breakfast.  Then Chowder took Dex on a tourist’s overview of San Francisco—Nob Hill (and Bob’s Donuts), Fisherman’s Wharf, a trip into the Mission for burritos and to dick around in the pirate store (chiefly to let Nursey know what he was missing in Manhattan), and an abbreviated stop in Union Square because if you weren’t shopping there was very little to do there.  On the way back, Chowder made sure to get Dex a Clipper card once they figured out Dex would be have an easier time getting to his internship by bus than by truck.

The internship was about what William expected—a mix of shadowing a couple of software devs, some basic coding projects probably designed at least as much to keep him busy as to either be useful or teach him anything, and attending meetings with several of the other interns.  They were pretty well supervised, and there were occasional evening outings for mandatory fun—bowling or a Giants game or dinner on the company’s dime.  The other interns were nice enough, and a few of them were even as keen to learn as William was, but he tried to stay immersed in his work.  He missed more intern-social lunches than he attended, and packed himself a lunch most days.

Evenings were generally spent with Chris and his family—several generations of family, including nearly as many cousins as William himself had, lived nearby.  Folks popped over, either with some minimal notice or else as if on a schedule William never felt brave enough to inquire about.  Chowder made sure he got put to work helping with cooking on the nights he was home early enough.  They spent a couple nights a week lifting in the small personal gym that occupied most of the finished basement.

Weekends varied, although Chris warned William that his aunts would be _happy_ to teach him to play in their biweekly game of mahjong—as long as they could take his money once he’d learned the rules.  They mostly spent their weekends hanging out and going on trips—an all-day trek from the Marina through Chrissy Field and across the Golden Gate Bridge, an Alcatraz tour, and a memorably weird jaunt around the Bay in a sailboat that belonged to one of Chowder’s uncles.

As with the week Dex had been at home in Maine, it felt natural to keep the missing one—Nursey, now—in the loop by incessant barrages on the Frogs’ group chat.  Dex found himself copying his proof-of-tea-parties over to Nursey after he’d sent them to Andrea.  Nursey laughed at Dex’s complaints about running on hills and Chowder’s utter lack of mercy in their workouts.  Off the group chat, Dex mentioned how busy his summer was, and kept track of Nursey’s adventures—concerts and coffee shops and tagging along on a business trip with Darlene to Iceland.

The race back to the east coast in early August was significantly less pleasant than the trip out.  By alternating shifts driving, often while the other slept, they kept to the necessary pace to get from San Francisco to Samwell in about half the time they’d taken to drive west.  Upon arriving at the Haus—having driven through the night to get to Faber in time for the first (fortunately practiceless) day of preseason—they attended the initial team meeting, met the Waffles, and passed the fuck out.

I’d rather not ambush you with that memory  
(A kiss that rendered a relationship a lie),  
So before I ask you to meet me by the Well,  
Where my lips might make a different impression,  
I need to make sure I leave you with no questions  
Remaining as to whether I would be your _Him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have the obligatory(?) roadtrip portion of the fic, complete with bed-sharing.
> 
> Thanks to Ironclad for offering up commentary and observations on his family to flesh out the Chows. Thanks also to Adam for the beta, and my sister for planning out Dex & Chowder's stopping points across the country. Am running out of buffer, but have hopes and ambitions of maintaining the posting schedule despite there being a trial I'm helping prep for coming up in a couple weeks.


	7. Chapter 7

Nursey was a trial.  _Living_ with Nurse was a trial.  Whoever said no one was given more hardship than they could endure had clearly been either mistaken or lying.  Music at all hours.  Underwear everywhere.  An intricately disorganized floordrobe that didn’t appreciate being _trod upon,_ _Dexy_.  Like a Southern state.  And worst of all, Derek Nurse shirtless in their room.  Of course.

There would be no surviving this, so Dex gave in to inevitability.  He stole what comforts he could: the bottom bunk; letting his alarm go off a second time to goad Nursey into running with him; claiming Lardo’s left-behind camping mattress to dump Nursey onto when he was too drunk to make it up to his bunk.  Dex hadn’t anticipated that one of the Waffles would be a disaster child fit to surpass Nursey, but Landmann—Louis—wasn’t his personal charge.  Just someone to watch out for.

The first big argument broke out, naturally, while Bitty was away.  Nursey had papers strewn across his desk where it sat up against one of the windows.  Dex was sitting at his desk, working.  He was already somewhat grumpy—he’d had to clean up team breakfast after cooking it, and Landmann had wondered at the purpose of team breakfast when it wasn’t Bitty cooking for them.  His headphones were in, blaring Rise Against at a volume he figured wouldn’t be audible at any reasonable distance.

So, naturally, Nursey pulled his headphones off.

‘Heyyyyy Dexy?’

‘I’m working Nurse.  What.’

‘I’m gonna need you to move your desk, if that’s not too much of an imposition.  I need to get out to the Reading Room.’

‘Kinda working here.  You can’t move your own desk?’

Dex didn’t look up from his laptop.  This, he would admit later, was a mistake.

‘Nah, hard to move it when it’s already in the corner.’

‘You said you wanted the corner.  I volunteered to take that desk.  I really have to work on this, though.  Machines don’t learn without input.  Maybe go out through the window in the hall and, like, walk around to outside our room?’

‘Can’t—you haven’t had time to fix that window yet, remember?’ 

‘I did warn you that you shouldn’t go out onto the roof when you’ve been drinking, Nursey.’

‘The stars were calling to me!  They wanted to be looked upon.  Gazed at.’

Dex could _feel_ the intensity with which Nursey was looking at him.  He could also feel himself flush under the scrutiny.  Just the scrutiny, though—no embarrassment at being so closely inspected by the guy he _totally was not crushing on_.

‘Ask Chowder?  Wait, nevermind.  He’s over at Farmer’s.  You could just go into his room and out, like, any of his windows.’

‘That’s a shot.’

‘God _dammit_ , Nursey.  I need to work.  This fucking machine will learn to be racist if I don’t figure out some algorithms to cull that shit from the database, and neither of us want that, if for different reasons.’

‘What, are you parenting it now?’

‘I mean, kinda, but for a grade.  So could you leave me alone to raise my AI brainchild so it doesn’t hate people of color?  I’m having to figure out how to filter the entire fucking internet here.’

‘You can’t take a, like, two-minute break to help me move your desk six inches?’

‘ _No_.  You can go out Chowder’s window.  We can move your desk later so that you can choose between window view and window access.  I get this window.  It’s mine to enjoy.  By looking out from my desk.’

Dex’s desktop laptop screen tilted.  No.  The entire _desk_ tilted.  Nursey was fucking lifting one side of it.

‘Fucking shit, Nurse.  Stop.  Leave me and my stuff alone and go out onto the roof by any other way you can find.  This one’s not yours.  No amount of entitlement will get you it.’

To punctuate his statement, Dex stood up, picked up his laptop, and sat down on top of the desk.  It slammed down onto the floor, catching the barest edge of Nursey’s brown leather shoes.  Nursey, in shock, lurched backward, caught himself on the post of their bunk beds, and kinda let himself slide down it to slump onto the floor.  He glared at Dex; Dex glared back briefly before returning to his code.

Nursey eventually got up, squawked at the damage the desk had done to his shoes—a thin layer of the leather at the toe cap had been skinned off—before striding, tight-lipped and exuding angry chill, from the room.  Dex noticed that his socks were mismatched—fashion, of course—one had lobsters on pastel green, the other was just a Sharks dress sock.

Chowder got back before dinner to the tense silence that had ruled the afternoon.  He had to tell them both to shut up when they both tried to rehash it to him at the same time, enforcing his command by goalie-glare.  He made them go through it one at a time, first Nursey then Dex—this was not the first time that Dex had thought he’d make a goddamn excellent captain, so long as he could find someone he trusted to be his on-ice alternate.

Chowder proceeded to print out a roommate contract he’d found on the internet and walked them through it.  Nursey and Dex both wrote in their preferred sleeping hours, preferred temperature ranges, and preferred studying environments.  They both agreed that headphones were fine, so long as they kept noise sufficiently contained.  Nursey agreed to try to limit his floordrobe’s sprawl—he refused to eliminate it altogether, admitting that it just wasn’t very likely to be a thing he’d maintain.  Dex agreed to only yell at Nursey about the mess if it encroached on spaces designated as entirely his.  They agreed to an eight-ish-inch buffer around his desk.  Chowder said that there’d be hell to pay if they were reduced to delineating spaces with tape or anything similar.

They believed him.

This was not to say that living in the Haus—living with Nursey—was entirely devoid of benefits.  Bitty was baking more this year than ever, with all the stressors in his life and all the schoolwork he desperately wanted to avoid.  Personal laundry in new machines was a definite plus (the weekend after SMH’s first roadie, Jack had visited and the captains had racked up enough fines—which Jack honored despite Bitty’s insistence that the bylaws immunized captains from fines—to replace both the washer _and_ the dryer).  Mostly, though, living in the Haus meant feeling like he was at the heart of the team, rather than hanging out on the periphery by association with Chowder and Nursey—Dex was under no particular illusions that he himself was intrinsically a core member of the team separate from the other Frogs.  Despite that, he did his best to be there for the Waffles in the face of Bitty’s throwback approach to acclimating them to the team.

Bitty had gone a little bit crazy over the summer.  The captain thing was definitely going to his head.  Bitty had at least softened on the amount of the fines when Dex brought that up.  Like, Dex didn’t know if any of the Waffles were at Samwell on scholarships—Bitty might know, but he also might not—but it woulda been extra awful if they were.  If any of this had been leveled at Dex his Frog year, he—he didn’t know what he’d have done.  Couldn’t drop hockey without dropping Samwell entirely.  Couldn’t do more work than the hours he had with Alumni Relations.  Couldn’t’ve afforded it without more available cash.  Nursey must have listened during the rant he might have given on the topic, as Dex heard him asking Landmann to let him know if the fines accumulated too much or too quickly.

Dex, for his part, did his best to keep from fining the Waffles.  He also made sure to spend some time with them to get to know them better.  Hops was pretty easy—sociable like Nursey was, but quick to rant about anime or video games.  He was more of a console kid, though, so Dex listened and asked questions about—for example—how the fuck the world of Kingdom Hearts made any damn sense.  Bully was quiet—reserved, but not particularly shy.  Good dude, _chill_ (most of the time) in ways that Nursey only pretended to be.  Dex co-opted him into helping out in the kitchen pretty early on when he volunteered to help Dex on a Team Dinner night that had Bitty missed by visiting Jack.  Louis… Louis was a good kid, but almost as effortlessly galling as Nursey himself had been back in the day.  He had most of Whiskey’s arrogance, most of Shitty’s enthusiasm, and as many misunderstandings as Tango.  Although Tango was at least part troll with his questions.

Then there was Nursey himself.  He made sure Dex took breaks from studying.  He seemed to have an eye (developed after some notable mishaps) for when it would help to drag Dex away from his work—and when doing so would only hinder him.  His poetry recitations were pretty clearly intended to irk or frustrate (or fluster) Dex—and they did.  Each of those things.  But Nursey was so deliberate about it—so resolutely _extra_ (so thoroughly _Nursey_ )—that it seemed an invitation to get to know him without his barriers up.  Having already decided that this was a terminal living situation, Dex decided (even though it was hard work a solid ninety percent of the time) to accept that invitation with as little grumping as he could manage.

The shape of the peace they’d forged changed as practices started.  Nursey was so (quietly—always quietly—like it could be taken away from him) excited to be a leader on the team that he actually paid close attention in whiteboard talks.  They might not be Ransom and Holster, but that wasn’t their style.  Privately, Dex thought, they might even be better.  Nursey low-key adopted Landmann—he had to remember to call him Louis out loud—as his waffle in a similar fashion to Bitty with Chowder—although Nursey accorded Louis rather more respect, even when it wasn’t necessarily deserved.  Somehow that led both to Dex needing to build a support structure for Louis’s speakers—Dex shuddered at the shipping costs for those— _and_ having to listen to Nursey gradually realize how worried people had gotten that Nursey Patrol became a necessary thing for kegsters.  He even thanked Dex for always taking care of drunk-Nursey.

Classes were going well, too.  Dex was carrying a full load of courses on top of hockey and his work study, but it was manageable so far.  He had Advanced Logic, a UX/UI design class with Chowder and Tango, Machine Learning with Chowder—somehow Tango had taken this the year before despite it being for upperclassmen—one last term of Spanish, a hybrid history/classics class on the Later Roman Empire, Byzantium, and Islam, and, finally, Self in Defiance: existentialist, feminist, and queer theoretic perspectives on societies.  None of them were exactly gut classes, but the only ones he was really worried about were Advanced Logic, if it strayed too far from coding, and the composition parts of Spanish.

If Tango kept his notes, Dex definitely planned to see if he could snag them.  He hoped, further, that he didn’t have to deal too much with his ex in any of the CS-related classes.

Dex’s alarm went off for the second time early Sunday morning, and he rolled out of bed to pad across the room—he’d already done that once, and then flopped back into bed.  In his bunk, Nursey was stirring.  He cracked an eyelid as Dex was putting on shorts for his run.  Dex met his glare and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken invitation.

Nursey groaned.  ‘You’re satan.’

‘I haven’t done anything particularly white yet today, Nursey.  Just get up and we can get you caffeinated once we’ve had a run.  Yeah?’

Nursey grunted, but swung himself off the top bunk and onto the ladder down from it.  He, too, got ready for a run—Dex felt like Nursey might be watching him when Dex wasn’t looking, but couldn’t be sure.  After throwing on a tank, he looked down and could see the words **That one’s** still exposed.  He finished getting ready, strapped his phone to his arm, and checked to see if Nurse was coming with this morning.

Nursey was bending over just as Dex turned to look, slipping running shorts over the briefs he’d slept in.  Dex whipped back around hard enough that the cord of his earbuds snapped against the back of his arm.  He busied himself with retying his shoes.

Dex felt a hand on his shoulder as Nursey bent over to retrieve his own, and his blushing flared hotter.  Neither commented as Nursey used Dex for balance while putting his shoes on.  For his part, Dex was pretty sure no words would come out while all he could think about was Nursey’s ass as his shorts slid up to his waist.

Another reminder that nothing about Derek Nurse was fair.

Once he had his shoes on, Nursey stopped using Dex as his personal support, patting him on the shoulder to let him know he was ready to go.  Despite being a poetry guy, Nursey was remarkably bad at words before coffee.  Or before ten—Dex wasn’t sure.

It was super muggy once they got outside—they’d definitely be gross upon their return.  They started at a leisurely pace, and Dex wasn’t sure which of them was matching the other—whether Nursey was sluggish and he was pacing that, or whether he was assuming Nursey would be slow and his roommate was just staying beside him.  They sped up in unison about half a mile from the Haus, and Dex tried to focus on the run and the feel of moving.  Not his hyperawareness of Nursey a couple feet away from him, moving as effortlessly as if he were in a dream—as if he were still dreaming.

They were about a mile and a half out from the Haus, passing the massive campus of a local high school and starting to curve back toward campus, when Nursey broke the silence.

‘Did you finally stop being afraid of being dangerous, Dexy?’

‘Wow.  _That’s_ how you’re finally starting a conversation?’

‘No!  I mean.  It’s chill that you’re not hiding anymore.  I like it, that you feel, like, safe and comfortable around us all.  You know the waffles all have mad respect for you.’

Dex shrugged.  He was a bit ahead of Nursey, so he assumed the gesture was seen.

‘You aren’t doing it because you ran out of SoulDye or whatever, are you?’

‘No.  I actually still have the last of the sheets you gave me.  I just.  The guys who’d make fun of me for it are gone or otherwise aren’t gonna start shit about it, and it feels kinda stupid to hide it from anyone in the Haus when half of us living there already know what my soulmate thought of me on the Taddy Tour.  I—I appreciate that you didn’t make a big thing out of it.  I was kinda afraid that you’d run with it once you saw.’

‘Ignoring whatever the other half of your mark says, being dangerous isn’t, you know, inherently bad.  People like bad boys.’

‘Which is why you fined Bully for usurping the team’s bad boy spot from you?’

Dex tried to deliver that deadpan.

‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘I mean, yeah?  Because you’re delusional if you think you’re the bad boy.  You went on the record as having a weird fixation on fucking _bibliographies_.  You have a favorite damn tree to read by—and you recite poems to it.  You’re a walking disaster at kegsters, but are polite to everyone even while falling-down drunk.  None of this makes you a bad boy, dude, and any one of those would disqualify you.’

‘Bibliography fixation still fake.  Even if—especially if—I help you with yours.  And so, what—you’re the bad boy of the team?’

‘No.  I’m just me, which apparently means that people project a lot of what they want to see me as onto me and get miffed when I don’t behave according to the unstated expectations.’

‘I’ve certainly _never_ had any experiences like that, Dexy.’

‘Not saying you haven’t.  Not saying that it’s even that bad a thing for me, as I’m mostly assumed to be extra-straight and at least mildly conservative and, like, always willing to throw down.’

‘All of which you can turn to your advantage.’

‘Yeah, except with you.’

‘Yeah, but I know better.’

‘Now.  You might recall that when I outed myself in truth or dare, I had to climb a damn tree to get you down.’

‘I wish I didn’t remember.  No.  I wish _you_ didn’t remember.  Or remind me.’

‘That’s tough, Nursey.  Reeeeeeeal tough.’

‘Ugh.  I should never have introduced you to memes.’

‘He says, as if I didn’t link him to knowyourmeme for three different things in the last week.’

‘There’s no audience here, Dexy.  Just me.  Second person.’

‘Yes, yes, Nurse—we know you’re an English major.  Among other things.  Race you back to the Haus?’

Nursey didn’t respond, just put on a burst of speed.  Dex barked a laugh and gave chase.  Even if he’d started at the same time, Dex wasn’t quite as swift a runner as Nursey, but there were advantages to this: first, Nursey’s shoulders; second, Nursey’s ass; third, being able to see Nursey if he tripped and maybe have a hope of catching him.  He pushed himself hard, so that hopefully he could claim Nursey’s jump start was the only reason he won (and so he wouldn’t be so tempted toward distraction).

Nursey didn’t trip on anything, and apparently decided he was just going to slam himself bodily into the grimy vinyl siding encircling the Haus porch.  He crowed his victory loud enough that Chowder shouted—just audible through his closed window—for Nursey to please shut up.  People were sleeping.

‘I win, Dexy.  Pay up.’ 

Nursey was grinning as he paced back and forth to cool off from the sprint.  Dex rolled his eyes exaggeratedly so Nursey couldn’t miss it as he loped the last few paces to catch up.  He’d started this, and now he had to suffer the consequences.

‘You didn’t set stakes.  You didn’t even say you agreed to the race.  You just started sprinting without saying anything at all.’

‘You offered the race.  You know how this goes.  I’ll grant the no stakes, though.  Standard forfeit.  I have all day to tell you to chill if I need to.’

‘Unless I’m actually wigging out.’

‘Obvs.  That gonna be a possibility today, do you think?’

‘Hopefully not.  Got a problem set due tomorrow, but Chowder and I are gonna go over it this afternoon.  What all d’you have?’

‘Eh.  Not much apart from a stats test.  So if you need me, I can rubber duck for you once I’ve got some studying out of the way.’

Bitty called out through the open kitchen window for them to come inside.  It wasn’t really a request.

‘Boys, get in here.  If you’re inclined to help with brunch, Dex, I’m pretty sure my bathroom’s free.  You can both shower at the same time.’

Dex rolled his eyes at Nursey as they shared a look.  Bitty was a very… _directive_ captain.  In ways that kinda reeked to Dex of insecurity, or at least uncertainty as to his authority.  Which was the dumbest thing.  Also, as much as he loved a clean kitchen, Bitty was only marginally better or more consistent than Ollie and Wicks at cleaning their bathroom.

However.  Bitty had long since decided that his word was law as _both_ Captain and Haus-Resident-in-Chief.  Wasn’t really worth it to Dex to buck that.  Not when he could easily make Dex’s life as unpleasant as he’d briefly made the Waffles’.

Dex went upstairs and showered in the non-Frog bathroom.  He took extreme care to enforce locker room rules regarding Nursey.  Even if he was doomed, there was no need to be stupid about it.

 

As Bitty said of it later, they were due for an injury, being honest.  Dex just hadn’t expected it to be such a stupid one.  Nursey’d gotten his second goal off of one of Dex’s assists that game.  He’d thanked Dex with an out-of-breath iteration—if Dex didn’t _very thoroughly_ (for his own sanity) know better—of the drawn-out vocal smirk he used when flirting sometimes.  But that was clearly not what it was.

Then Nursey’d gone over the boards.  Well.  Not _quite_ over the boards.  Mid-chirp, Nursey had registered that not only had he attempted to go over the _gate_ , but that it hadn’t been latched.  So, with a muted ‘chill’, he lost his balance and faceplanted.  He broke his fall on his arm, which meant his fall broke his arm.

Appalled as he was at the injury, Dex was very glad he hadn’t broken his neck.  No one wants to be that kind of Cassandra.   Time was called, and Nursey got picked up and helped out to the trainers—he’d fallen exactly on his face after his arm, so there was concern about a concussion.  Dex was without a line-mate, so all he got to do for the remainder of the game was worry as he watched Bully and Candy clean house.

He knew he’d have been useless on the ice, anyway, but that didn’t help matters.

Didn’t help the anxiety.

Dex beat Chowder to signing Nursey’s cast, but not Bitty—the Captain had accompanied him to the hospital for x-rays and getting it set and cast.  He waited for them to get back out on the bench on the front porch, and radiated such a fierce do-not-interact aura that any celebrations for their win were muted and entirely in the living room.

Chowder had given him a sharpie and one of his new fidget cubes, before saying he’d be around if Dex needed anything and heading up to his room.

Nursey was a bit loopy when they got back—Bitty had tweeted about how he’d apparently told the doctor he did not recommend the amount of pain he was in—and sat down heavily on the bench beside Dex and leaning into his space.

‘Awwww, Dexy—were you worrying?  I didn’t know you cared.’

_Then you haven’t been paying attention, Nursey_.

Bitty snorted.  It was not dignified.  Awwww, fuck—he’d said that out loud.  Nursey just leaned into him some more.

‘You gonna sign my cast, Dexy?  Looks like you got a sharpie there and everything.’

‘If you want me to.’

Nursey twisted his arm into Dex’s space so Dex could sign the inside with his usual WJP.  He patted the cast, which he immediately realized was a stupid thing to do, but Nursey seemed fine.  Then he helped Nursey inside and up the stairs to their room.

 

Nursey refused Dex’s offer to swap to the top bunk, although he said he appreciated it.  He just might need some help getting down sometimes if that was alright.  That was fair enough, Dex supposed.

What wasn’t fair was being treated like staff—maid and nurse and butler (fetch this, clean it up if you want it neat, how long until I can take another pill, Dexy?).  It started small, but increased quickly as Nursey got irritable about his inability to play or help the team.

Dex might not have handled it gracefully, either. 

It didn’t help that, for his part, Dex was down the only liney he’d had in three years.  Bully was good, but it was a temporary pairing, and they didn’t know each other nearly as well as he knew Nursey.  It showed in their playing, and Dex was constantly worried about his scholarship.

They managed to avoid any major blowouts, but the atmosphere in their room grew increasingly tense. 

Darlene came up to visit Nursey over Parents’ Weekend—they sat together in the stands in the game; Dex played—got his second goal of the season.  It wasn’t his best game, but he played alright.  Got some good hits in, too.  Afterward, in the locker room where everyone was celebrating their win, he noticed that Tango and Whiskey appeared to have completed their soulmarks—Tango now sported both **He’s so smart—why’s he even here** and **He needs a lot of explanations** , while Whiskey’s shoulder read **I wonder what they call that kind of haircut**.  Dex didn’t catch sight of Whiskey’s other mark, but he hoped that'd worked out, too.

Dex was happy for them—he assumed the pair had figured things out with the wrestler they’d been spending so much time with.  It still galled.  Envy was a terrible thing.

After the game, Darlene took the Frogs out to dinner—she was much less brusque with Dex this time, although Dex had prepared for it to be as bad or worse.  Nursey left campus with her to stay in Boston—he was pretty sure at a hotel on the Common, but he stopped listening as he focused on drafting the last parts of his plans.

Dex had gotten Uncle Luke to send him some scrap wood, which he’d kept in the basement.  He didn’t want to, like, alienate Nursey further than he already had, but he needed some damn space for himself—that was under his sole control.  If there was gonna be a mess, it should be _his_ mess to put up with.

So he built an enclosure around the bottom bunk.  He took out the (old and in poor shape) floorboards and replaced them with a plywood sheet nailed securely to the joists—just enough space for him to have an inch or so of spare room around his mattress as it sat into the floor.  He sanded the remaining floorboards’ edges down nice and thoroughly.

After that came the walls, although he’d done most of that earlier, in the basement.  No one went down there when they heard power tools going.  So it was mostly a matter of hauling them up.  Chowder had checked on him once, but seemed to think it was an attempt at a reasonable solution once he’d explained his plan for a bed fortress.

Bitty had ignored not only the entire construction process but the simmering tension between Nursey and Dex.

So, when Nursey got back from his weekend in Boston, he saw Dex open the door to his room-within-their-room and come out—locking the door behind him—to ask how it had been.

‘Good to get away, brah, but—what’s the deal with the bed?’

‘I’m claiming my desk, the window it’s in front of, my dresser, a third of the closet, and enough space to get between them.  The rest of the room outside the bed enclosure is yours to fuck around with as you see fit.  I don’t want to make everything awful between us, Nursey, but I need my fucking space.  And if everywhere is subject to the fallout from your injury, then we’ll just keep getting worse.  So.  Yeah.  If my door’s closed, please don’t fuck with me.’

‘And if your door’s not closed—’

‘Then please also don’t fuck with me.’

Freshman year tension with junior year civility.  Great.  At least they could talk.

‘Noted.’

* * *

Mistakes were made.  Bah.  Passive voice.  Regardless of who else made mistakes, those at issue were Nursey’s.  He should never have agreed to the dibs flip.  He should never have thought he’d be fine living with Dex.  He should never have been so _stupid_ as to think his crush would subside in any sort of close proximity to his snappy ginger when it hadn’t over the course of a summer apart.

Mistakes continued to be made.

Dex hadn’t risen to Nursey’s defensive baiting.  No reaction to the floordrobe—that wasn’t so much bait, though, as it was Nursey’s approach to laundry.  No outbursts at the poetry recitations—though he did blush to his collar the one time Nursey was reckless enough to spend an entire evening expounding on meter in Catullus and Sappho with (rehearsed) off-the-cuff-examples to support his points (see again, mistakes).  No complaints about the fact that living with Dex entailed that Dex was permanently assigned Nursey Patrol.  Dex soldiered on through it all, and only came close to snapping when Nurse had bad timing in study breaks or retreated too far into his chill.

That bugged him for some reason, and Nursey dared not speculate on why.

Nursey couldn’t very well explain that the chill, here in his own fucking room, was to salve what peace there could be for them in a world with a gap between what Nursey wanted and what he could have.  Tantalus and apple cheeks.

So, contrary to Frost, ice and fire found an equilibrium in a frat house bedroom—and the world didn’t end.  Although that might have been more convenient.  Dex got up too early, and a snoozed alarm became an unstated invitation for an early morning run on days they didn’t have practice.  They only argued over it for a solid week.  Once roof access was negotiated, Nursey assumed the role of the Reading Room Sage, thrilled to have unfettered all-hours access to a rooftop for the first time since Andover.  Dex rarely bugged him out there, or ventured out himself—he took his escapes to rather more literal (or digital) extremes—and often muttered about needing to shore up the supports for the roof or something about rotted wood or other construction nonsense.  There was at least one worried evaluation of the fire damage that Nursey personally witnessed.

September had passed with only mini-eruptions—or a low-grade continuous flow with lots of warning smoke, maybe, like that volcano in Iceland that the internet had collectively failed to pronounce right.  They worked well on the ice—Holster and Ransom would be missed, but SMH would persevere in their absence—and Dex stepped up his role as Jack’s successor as brooding den mother (hen brooding, not Vic lit hero brooding).  He was reluctant to fine the Waffles, but finally found something—Hops would have been fined for breaking sticks even if Dex hadn’t been the one to do it—after Bitty made a pointed offhand comment.  His deadpan made him all the more imposing when Bitty tapped the two of them to be enforcers for Haze by Hazewest.

The worst was the week his brain had decided would be a great time to fuck with him for no apparent reason.  Just depression, like lightning from a blue sky.  Dex had been assiduous in trying to gauge whether he wanted to be left alone to die or wanted company.  Brought him food—made him pie.  Didn’t comment throughout.  Nursey felt like he had to create distance to remind himself to not read it as interest.  As more-than-friendly-care.

Then the season had started and it all started going slowly to hell.  Dex got more and more wound up.  Nursey was always one to let his tidiness slip before anything else when he got pressed for time.  These were not traits that matched well.  The sports injury—well.  If he couldn’t play hockey and he couldn’t tweak Dex, then what was there to live for anyway?  He didn’t think he’d gone too far, or been entirely unreasonable in asking for help.  Dex… pretty clearly thought otherwise.  And now he’d literalized the metaphorical walls he kept up at most times.

Nursey started whining about it to Chowder when they hung out without Dex—a continuation of the summer where he _totally was **not** pining, Christopher_.  Chowder was—mostly—a sympathetic listener.  Except when he made stupid and dangerous suggestions like that he consider telling Dex about how he felt.

‘Use your words, Nursey.  We all know you’re good at them.  Or at least stop trying to fuck with Dex in his own room.  You realize that he’s _built himself a protective barrier around his bed_ , and that _you caused that_.’

They were in Chowder’s room, on his bed.  Chowder was leaning back against his pillows and the wall, while Nursey was curled up around Sharkey.  Dex was somewhere not in the Haus—the library, maybe?  All Nursey knew was that there was minimal danger of being overheard.

‘That wasn’t what happened!  I went into Boston for a weekend with Darlene and came back to find Dex had built his fortress of solitude or whatever and told me to not fuck with him.  And now I don’t know what I did and if I have to ask I can’t really be sorry.’

Nursey curled up further around Sharkey.

‘You can be sorry.  You can even ask him about it.  It’d show him you care enough to figure it out.  You do know—or are at least pretty sure—that you did do something.  He hasn’t said anything specific to me—with or without promises to not tell you—so you might have to talk to him.  Could be related to the floordrobe?  It’s gotten somewhat more extensive since you broke your arm.’

‘Might be.  But I guess I have to talk to him if you don’t have any inside knowledge.’

Chowder nodded, and let the conversation lapse.  He pulled out his laptop and started to do something on it.  From the pauses between inaction and mad bursts of typing, Nursey figured he was working on a problem set.  Which meant that Dex would have one to swear at later.  Maybe he could curry favor by offering to rubber duck for it.  He’d take all the advantages he could get.

Nursey got lost in angles and approaches that he missed something Chowder said—he only knew because Chowder cleared his throat at him.  Nursey looked up and was about to ask him to repeat what he’d said, only to see Chowder looking at him.  Evaluating.  Maybe he hadn’t missed something.  Chowder raised an eyebrow, and it was like he’d been taking lessons from Lardo.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’

‘Tch.  You know they’re worth more than that.  Or at least my time is.’

‘Only familially, Nursey.  You’re still a college student who doesn’t have enough experience to get an entry level job, much less be paid to just think.’

Nursey paused, to try to form a palatable—safe—version of what he’d been thinking.  Naturally, what came out of his mouth was nothing of the sort.

‘How do you tell someone that you lied without telling them outright why?’

‘I’m going to start fining you for whining to me about Dex if you can’t even figure out how to get out of your own way here, dude.  Go.  Talk. To. Him.’

‘What if it fucks up our friendship?’

‘Do you _really_ think Dex’d stop being friends with you for that?  As opposed to any of the other reasons he has wondered aloud at—and still been your friend?’

‘…No.  But he’s not home right now.’

‘ _Obv_ iously.  All available doors between our rooms are open.  You wouldn’t even consider **breathing** like this with him around.’

Chowder, satisfied with the return to chirping, went back to his problem set.  Probably so he could help Dex when he got back from… wherever he’d gone.  It wasn’t the usual time for his work study.  Nursey got off Chowder’s bed and retrieved some readings from his room.  He could hear from his new perch on Chowder’s beanbag chair when Dex stalked into their room, took his shoes off, and went into his fortress.

Nursey heard him lock the door behind him.

He slumped further into the beanbag chair, kneading the polystyrene beads through the thin pleather.  Chowder sighed and dropped a hand onto Nursey’s shoulder.

‘You can figure this out, you know.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

 

Nursey was no closer to figuring things out a week later, as he and Dex were prepping for the kegster to celebrate Chowder’s birthday, which conveniently fell on a Saturday.  Things had, at least, mellowed somewhat in that time.  Dex was laughing as Nursey tried to put his Left Shark costume on.  Somehow, Dex hadn’t had any trouble getting his on—probably the whole two functioning arms thing.  He’d thought the idea hilarious and—finally—a good use of Nursey’s money.  Apparently eighteen-month-old meme costumes were the right level of frivolous (Nursey might have been projecting his disappointment that Bitty hadn’t let them do this last year onto Dex, but that was probably alright).  Or maybe it was the effect they anticipated it having on Chowder.  Fortunately, the costumes, when they arrived, had both holes in the fins for hands and holes in the open mouth part for their faces.

Dex also suggested to Nursey—told Nursey—that he’d probably have to patrol himself, because they both know that a) the team was probably going to ensure that Chowder was going to be just _absolutely_ schwasted for his birthday (however much or little booze that actually required, it would certainly happen), b) since Dex was his roommate, he was permanently on Nursey Patrol whenever it was needed, and c) Dex couldn’t be effective while worrying about them both.  Nursey had rolled his eyes, had muttered something about how the team clearly didn’t know who the mom-friend really was around here, and then agreed.

The Haus that night was done up in teal and black and sharks—plush ones, stickers, some wrapping paper that Lardo’d hung in a complicated fashion off of crepe paper.  Not just the hockey type, even aside from Dex and Nursey’s costumes.  Nursey had worked with Dex on the decorations and the invitations—he’d seemed perfectly willing to get along for Chowder’s sake, anyway.  They’d invited a bunch of the volleyball team, and a number of his friends whom Dex knew from shared classes.  Haus 2.0 all returned for the occasion.  Jack sent his regrets and one of Martin Jones gloves with a signature and a busted seam.

Dex insisted on DJing.  Nursey agreed that, having spent an entire summer with him, he probably knew Chowder’s favorites at least as well as he did himself.  Even if Nursey could have come up with a better playlist for a kegster.  Tonight, though, a good playlist was less important than one that Chowder would like.  Birthday kegsters were not for getting laid—not that he really had plans for that while pining over Dex and rooming with him.

So Nursey made do with beer to drink and some of the rowdiest upbeat skater punk he’d ever heard.  Well, not quite: it was all stuff Chowder had played at one point or another.  Just—it was much more intense all strung together rather than interspersed with his own music.  He wondered how hard Dex’d had to work to create the list

Nursey was at least willing to admit it flowed well from song to song, and was danceable in a very bouncy way.  Good for Chowder.  And, given Dex’s performance on the dance floor, left sharks (Chowder had laughed for two whole minutes after seeing the costumes.  That, and Dex’s responding grin—bright and earnest even as he embarrassed himself to make his friends happy—was worth the whole cost of the outfits).

Dex rotated between the laptop he’d hooked up to Louis’s Haus-rattling speaker system, checking up on Chowder—both to see if he needed anything and to make sure he hadn’t been forced into too many kegstands by the alums—and the dance floor.  Nursey knew Dex knew how to dance.  Like, properly.  Ballroom and shit.  But that boy did not know what to do with himself without a standard moveset, however extensive, to pick from.  It was equal parts awkward and endearing, and Nursey kinda hated himself for his reaction as he watched Dex do a very in-character interpretation of his costume.

Nursey might have been staring a bit.

He jumped when Farmer, whom he hadn’t seen approaching, pressed a new beer into his flipper.  Well, his good hand where it stuck out from his flipper.  He was rather impressed that he didn’t spill any of it.

Farmer laughed at him.

‘Good job not spilling, dude.’

‘Thanks.  Good job sneaking up on me.’

‘Eh.  Easy enough when you’re otherwise occupied.’  Farmer looked pointedly over toward Dex, who was moving back to the laptop.  ‘No tub juice tonight?’

‘Nah.  Dex and I agreed it would be bad.’

‘Agreed?  I didn’t know you two were talking much at the moment.’

‘It’s gotten a bit better?  But mostly we’ve stuck to safe topics.  Like planning this thing.  I’m hoping this gets us back to some approximation of normalcy.’

‘You miss your boy.’

‘One he is not my boy.  We all know this.  Two I am too sober to continue with any variation of this conversation.’

‘That’s a shot for boys being stupid.  I’m sure he misses you too.’

‘There’s no rule for that.’

‘It’s new.  Chowder will back me up on it.  We can ask him if you like.’

‘He’ll back you up on basically anything you suggest.  That’s not fair.’

‘Life’s not fair, Nursey.  You’ll live, though.  Especially since I’m gonna go relieve Dex of Chowder patrol, meaning that you’ll be free to get as schwasted as you please.  You can even reenact Chowder’s birthday from two years ago that got Nursey patrol started in the first place.  Go get some tub juice—I don’t think Shitty’ll ever let you have the Burning with Orange again, given last time.’

Nursey sputtered as Farmer left his side, heading directly toward where Dex was trying to get Chowder to drink some water.  She turned back to smirk at him before taking Chowder’s hand and saying something to Dex.  Dex rolled his eyes but grinned and made an exaggerated he’s-all-yours gesture at Farmer.  The flippers really made it a production.  Chowder laughed, hugged Dex, and draped himself over his girlfriend.

Shitty had retaken his post as the bearer of tub juice.

‘You sure you’re allowed to do this?  You have to know that there are at least some minors accepting your offerings.’

‘Brah, I’m not a mandatory reporter until I’m all barred and shit.  I am just a lowly 2L who really should be making edits to some asshole’s Very Important article for the crim journal.  And everyone I have asked about their age has told me that they’re allowed to drink.  What more could possibly be expected of me?’

‘Lots, Shits.  Lots.  Fortunately, you’re probably safe.  Even though you know I’m not of age.’

‘Yeah, but you aren’t gonna compromise your source.’

‘True.

‘Then Nunc est bibendi.’

Shitty made a great show of handing over a brim-full solo cup of teal-tinted tub juice.  He had to have altered something from the usual recipe—it was normally a tawny brown, like doctored ginger ale.  When Nursey asked Shitty about it, he only got a smile and waggled eyebrows in return.

When Farmer caught Nursey watching, she nodded him over to where they were standing on the edge of the dancing space.  Dex raised an eyebrow at the tub juice; Nursey shrugged.

‘Farmer said I could be your problem tonight.’

‘You’re _always_ my problem, Nursey.  But it’s okay.’

‘I assured him that Chowder should be under my care rather than his.’

‘You’re helping with breakfast tomorrow, then.’

Nursey took another pull of tub juice as the next song started—it sounded like the same singer as the band Chowder had gotten Dex to like at the start of the summer.  He was going to be so gross by the time the night was done—the costume was… _well insulated_.  Good for outdoor Halloweens in northern climates.

Chowder started jumping up and down like it was the obvious way to dance to the song.  It didn’t strike Nursey as fast enough (or even similar to the punk-y stuff that had been playing before) to do that, but Dex and Farmer joined in.  Who, then, was he to say otherwise?  He took another gulp of tub juice so it wouldn’t slosh everywhere immediately.  It took at least two jumps before Dex was wearing a quarter cup of tub juice.

The night progressed quickly from there.

Nursey retained snapshots of the evening—faux-moshing with the other Frogs and Farmer, Chowder laughing hysterically as Dex and Nursey slow-grinded up on Farmer to Beyonce that Bitty must have snuck into the playlist.  At some point, he must have gone up to his room to abandon the costume.  He vaguely remembers the sensation of fabric sliding down his back as the t-shirt Dex tossed missed his face.  He remembers tripping on something and Dex catching him and saying something that at the time had been funny.  Or flirtatious.  Or something.

Something important.

Nursey remembers hanging out with Chowder and Farmer on the Haus’s back deck.  The tadpoles swung by for a bit, he thinks—there’s a snapshot in his head of Tango petting the wrestler’s hair.  And then Dex was doing most of the work carrying him up to their room and depositing him on Lardo’s cot, which he’d kept expressly so he wouldn’t have to harry drunk-Nursey up to his bunk.  He must have coaxed him into changing into appropriate clothing to sleep in at some point.

Nursey’s eyes were glued shut and his head was all sleep-fuzzy.  He was pretty sure that—if Dex was reliable (and when was he not, even in his temper?)—there would be a bottle of water or Powerade or something within reach.  And painkillers.  Nursey just couldn’t muster the energy to grope around for it. 

He gave himself five more minutes to get up.

Nursey woke next to the sound of Dex putting a plate down on a desk.  He wasn’t sure whose.  It smelled like bacon and pancakes and warm syrup.  His stomach grumbled, but he still didn’t want to open his eyes.

‘You missed breakfast.  You ok?’

‘Peachy.  Just leave me to die.’

‘Been a while since you went so hard.  Landmann—Louis—got to witness the full Nursey patrol experience.  Cautionary tale.’

‘I do anything terrible?’

‘Not unusually.  You know you’re kinda… _tactile_ when drunk.’  Dex sounded like he was picking his words carefully.  Nursey chose to worry about that later.  ‘Mostly you didn’t seem to realize it was me who carried you upstairs.’

‘Pretty sure I knew it was you.’

‘You weren’t talking to me like it.’

Nursey—suddenly _very_ awake because of the ice in his veins—wasn’t sure if Dex sounded deadpan amused or, like, pointedly neutral.

‘What, uh, did I say?’

Dex sighed, even as his ears pinked.

‘Better we just drop this, ok?’  The last word sounded more plea than a question.

Before Nursey could muster the will to achieve verticality, Dex had padded quietly out of the room.  He muttered something about ‘still unfair even three years on,’ which—what.  Nursey opened his eyes to a dim room—the blinds Dex had installed after one of his own hangovers were down.  The lime Powerade was about where his arm would naturally have fallen if he’d let it fall off the side of the cot.  The plate Dex had brought in was on his desk, along with a thermos (of coffee?) and silverware on a napkin.

Nursey took several swigs of Powerade before trudging into the bathroom to brush the fuzz off his teeth.  It was amusing and sorta endearing that Dex still didn’t believe him about hangovers—probably thought it was defensive denial or bravado or some shit—and still provided painkillers, like, just in case.  He took a leisurely shower and was thorough with his skincare.  Breakfast was lukewarm either way, so he’d enjoy it better if his mouth wasn’t residually minty.

Dex’s bag and laptop were gone.

Once he’d eaten, Nursey shoved his dirty clothes into the closet, which already contained the shucked shark costume.  He wondered what he should do with that—it wasn’t really something with much in the way of reuse potential.  After closing off that mess again, he took the breakfast dishes—and the empty thermos—downstairs.  Hopefully there would be more coffee.

There was coffee, but there was also most of the Haus crew lounging about in the living room and kitchen.  A shout—an assault of noise—went up when he was spotted downstairs, led by Shitty and echoed immediately by Holster.  Nursey bypassed them on the way into the kitchen.  Lardo, sitting at the kitchen table, rolled her eyes at them and handed Nursey a mug of coffee that had been sitting there waiting.

No one deserved Lardo.

‘Welcome back to the land of the living.’

Nursey grunted in response.  Took a drink of coffee.  It was lukewarm but delicious. 

‘You had a good time last night, it seems.  Or at least an excessive one.’

Nursey shrugged and wandered out to the front porch.  Lardo followed.

‘What kind of volcano is Dex right now?’

‘Dex isn’t a volcano.’

They sat on opposite ends of the bench, their mugs between them.  Nursey pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees.

‘How angry is he?  I think I said something last night.’

‘You said a lot of things.  At various points.  Do you have a specific worry?’

‘He brought me breakfast and then left the Haus.’

‘He told Holster to make sure you hadn’t died if you weren’t up by, like, three.’

‘Time’s it?’

‘Quarter to two.  That help you place him on your, uh, volcano scale?’

‘No.  Just means that he’s Weirdly Nice Dex today.’

‘I mean, you did tell him he swept you off your feet last night.  That might explain a lot of things.’

‘I fucking did what?’

Feet flat on the floor, almost a stomp—a precursor to flight.

‘You fell down on him.  He caught you.  You said that.  He pointed out that he just caught you after you fell.  You declared it the same thing and pretended to swoon extravagantly.  It’s a testament to his willpower that he didn’t just drop you.’

‘He would never!’

‘We know.  We allllllllll know.  He’s very careful.’

Lardo was laughing at him.  Nursey could tell by the smirk.  No one deserved Lardo.

‘But he’s not angry?’

Nursey drank more coffee.

‘You could probably make him defensive in no more than six words, but that’s more embarrassment than anger.’

‘Fuck.’

They sat in silence for a while.  At least long enough for Nursey to finish his coffee and try to run through all of the ways he could handle this.  Lardo seemed content to let the silence last as long as he needed, quiet in a way that no one else on the team really was after Jack graduated.  Even when Dex was quiet, there was noise—the tapping of keys while he worked, the frantic clicking of his mouse when he played video games, and always music as if to drown out his thoughts.

Nursey needed paper.  He could process this on paper better than offloading it onto someone.  Lardo might listen, but might tell him to man up and talk to Dex.  Chowder certainly would tell him that, but he might not even be around today.  No way in hell he was gonna try to talk to Rans or Holster about it—too much gossip potential there.

Nursey groaned.  Lardo nodded.

‘Know what you’re gonna do?’

‘Write it out.’

‘Gonna show it to him when you’re done?’

‘Dunno.  Should I?’

‘You _do_ like him, right?’

‘Yeah.’  Nursey felt like that was admitting defeat.  Which was stupid—it was only defeat if he got rejected.  ‘Even when he’s infuriating.  Or when he’s reacting to me being infuriating, I guess.’

‘Seems like maybe you should tell him.’

‘What if he doesn’t like me back?’

‘You’re not stupid, are you, Nurse?  Really?  That dude wants to be everyone’s older brother.  But he goes so much farther out of his way to try to care about you it’s astounding.  And he’s pretty sure you never notice.  Or, like, don’t like it.’

‘He’s told you this?’

‘He _might_ have spent some time whining at me.  Particularly about how awful rooming with you has been because you are—and I quote, because it’s his standard way of putting it—“unfairly pretty.”  Even, apparently, while you’re apparently treating him like a maid or a butler.  I kinda ignored some of that and just let him vent, because it was either true or a matter of him misinterpreting shit and being a dumb white boy.  We have a lot of those around here.’

Nursey knew his face had gone slack for a second before he could rearrange it into High Chill.  _Dex thought of him like his soulmark_.  Well.  If ‘that’s unfair’ expanded to include being pretty.  He couldn’t decide whether or not that was cause for hope or worry or both.  Both—always both.

Lardo was waiting for a response with a gently amused expression—no attack eyebrows.

‘They mostly try.’

‘Mostly.  It took Shitty a while to remember which one was the racist Stop & Shop.’

Nursey tried to drink some more out of his coffee mug, but it was empty.  He’d forgotten it was empty.  Lardo chuckled.

‘Go refuel.  Then turn coffee into words or whatever it is you writers do.  Lemme know if I can help.  Whining might cost you, but only favors to be called in later.’

‘Leaving soon?’

‘Eh.  Couple hours.  Late lunch and time enough for Bitty to make us each pies.  I think he’s off getting supplies.  This might mean we’re here for team dinner.  Why—do you want us to go?’

‘Not as a general matter, no.  I’m always glad when you guys come back to visit.  But, I gotta—’

‘Yeah.’

‘Could you try to keep him occupied if he comes back before you head out?’

‘Sure, bro.’

‘Thanks, Lards.’

Lardo nodded and made a shooing motion.

‘Get to work, Nurse.’

Nursey went back into the kitchen long enough to drop his mug in the sink and refill the thermos with yet more coffee.  Tucking that under his casted arm, he stole the last remaining piece of bacon and left the room before Bitty could swat at him with a dish towel.  In his room, Nursey ran his fingers over the spines of unfilled notebooks for a moment before plucking out one with nice paper that wasn’t also so important that he cared about keeping the pages all in it.  He took that, the one Dex had inscribed from the gift exchange, and the thermos of coffee out onto the roof and settled into the folding chair Shitty had installed—and Dex had bolted down.

_That one’s dangerous (or could be, if I let him)_.  There.  A start to the confession—explanation?  Excuse.  Nursey wrote some more—scratching out entire lines, scribbling over words, rearranging others—before taking stock of the sonnet he’d written.

That wouldn’t do at all.

Dex thought sonnets were frilly and dumb.  Dex liked straightforward statements and puzzles.  He’d made Nursey explain at length how he’d written that sestina about trains.  Wulp.  He didn’t need to do anything else this afternoon, anyway.  Thirty-nine lines offered more space to explain things anyway.

 (I’ve written this poem; might as well give it to [him]—  
Face your questioning and for once tell you no lies  
Could I impress on you the rest of that memory?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summer's finally over! Year 4, with less drama than canon, because the idiots have learned how to talk better in this AU. I finally got to use the Left Shark joke costume for a Chowder birthday that I've been sitting on for too damn long. And Lardo finishes the meddling that Chowder started (because everyone knows that Dex wouldn't make a move, for any number of reasons).
> 
> Thanks to Denois for the last-minute beta read!
> 
> Fortunately for me (and my utter lack of backlog), next chapter will a) be shorter, b) be the last, and c) be pretty straightforward. So I won't have to replicate my production of 8k words in like 10 days.


	8. Chapter 8

Dex wasn’t _proud_ that he was avoiding the Haus.  Avoiding Nursey (avoiding the issue).  He knew it was dumb—that it wouldn’t solve anything.  That it was just postponing the inevitable.  He really hadn’t expected to survive living with Nursey.  He just—he hadn’t expected the full force of cuddle-drunk Nursey to be focused on _him_.

He’d been so sure it was just displaced or misdirected.  But Nursey—possibly hungover, possibly just unwilling to face the day—had offhandedly confirmed things when Dex brought him breakfast.  It was easier to be angry or defensive (or avoidant) based on a conclusion that Nursey was fucking with him.  It didn’t seem right, but it was easier—and far less scary—than the thought that Nurse might actually have been flirting with (at) him.  Because that thought might get his hopes up.

And hope was terrifying.

But even the hope was misplaced: Nursey’d gotten his soulmark before he’d ever met Dex.  So they couldn’t be soulmates.  Maybe he’d decided Dex was safe, in some convoluted fashion, to flirt with?  Dex wasn’t sure which was the worse thought—Nursey deciding _that_ or fucking with him.

So Dex had packed his shit up and headed out, getting a fistbump from Lardo and Ransom on the way out.  Because he was consciously avoiding things, he steered clear from his usual study haunts. He decided to hide out in the science library.  No sense in being easily found—at least not until he’d gotten some work in on his machine learning project.

Ransom had told him, during one of their anxiety-bros check ins, about the hidden study room back behind several decades’ worth of accumulated scientific periodicals.  It was a great spot, Rans had said, as long as it wasn’t otherwise occupied for an out-of-the-way hookup.

Early afternoon on a weekend not being the prime time for library sex, the room was available.

Dex settled into the windowless cinderblock room and cranked the volume on his music until he was only mostly sure that it couldn’t be heard outside.  He spent some time combing through the results that the search algorithms he’d written turned up, and wished—not for the first time—that, comprehension of sarcasm, the concept of context, and the _interpretation_ of context could be programmed.

 **Farmer:** You in hiding?  
 **Me:** Would you leave me alone if I said yes?  
 **Farmer:** [JustinTimberlakejudgingyou.gif]  
 **Me:** Will you call off any hypothetical search parties if I said yes?  
 **Farmer:** Right, because I’ve got so much authority over you weird hockey boys  
 **Me:** I mean.  Moderately straightforward influence on Chowder is pretty good indirect authority.  Especially if he’s the one looking  
 **Farmer:** so you admit that you’re hiding.  
 **Me:** I admit _nothing_  
 **Farmer:** Good.  You’re learning  
 **Me:** I knew not to talk to cops before I got here  
 **Farmer:** And yet we’re still talking.  Skipping past the obvious, then, should I (we) worry that you’re in hiding?  
 **Me:** only as much as usual.  Processing shit  
 **Farmer:** Anything in particular?  Also, processing or ruminating  
 **Me:** you say that like those are different things  
 **Farmer:** ugh.  Boys.  But seriously—things ok?  
 **Me:** He said he knew it was me.  Like, was conscious of it while draping himself on me.  And I don’t think there are good possibilities that result from this.  And I don’t know if him fucking with me is the least-bad option here, but I don’t see any that aren’t worse.  
 **Farmer:** Where are you.  I’m sending Chowder.  
 **Me:** No, don’t.  I’ve gotta get some work done on the ux/ui thing before I can face him  
 **Farmer:** Well, get cracking.  You gonna meet up before team dinner?  
 **Me:** awwww, fuck.  I forgot about that.  
 **Farmer:** So you’ve got that fun to look forward to, too.  I’ll let you get back to work and tell C not to try finding you.  You’re not in your usual spots, right?  Cuz he might want to look anyway.  
 **Me:** nah.  New spot.  Not saying where. 

Dex set an alarm so he could be back at the Haus for dinner and fell into work.  He got enough work done on his search results that he felt he understood both the problem of the work and the reason it was a problem.  When he had enough evidence to show his group on that point, he switched over to the pset so he could sound at least a little bit like he knew what was up when he and Chowder went over things.

He was almost to a point where he understood the depth of the questions when his alarm went off.  It rained all the way back to the Haus—the kind of rain that comes just before winter and soaks through anything up to and including multiple layers of goretex or fishing gear.  Dex was thoroughly damp when he got home, but everyone was already seated, so he just hung up his coat, set his bag down, and joined them at the table—the only open seat was between Ollie and Bitty.

Nursey looked up at him, smiled briefly—weird in and of itself—and returned his entire focus to his plate.

‘Hey, Dex.  Productive day?  You missed Nursey losing thoroughly at Smash Brothers.’

‘You also missed a pretty epic procrastibaking sesh.’

‘Well.  The event itself.  There’s still half a pie and some brownies.  Nursey yelled at us to save you some.’  Ollie and Wicks fistbumped.

Nursey didn’t look up when Dex looked over.  He was eating pretty mechanically, like when he was nervous about something.  Chowder offered his very best attempt at an innocent and ignorant face when Dex turn his attention to the goalie.

What.  The fuck.

Dex was about to ask what the hell was up when Bitty launched into an epic and—judging by Chowder’s muted enthusiasm—rehashed story about how he’d needed to test some old recipes for a chapter of his thesis and Jack had wanted to try them to see how they differed and… so it went.

The remainder of dinner continued in similar fashion—Bitty rambled as if on cue, Nursey refused to look up from his dinner (and disappeared almost immediately after he finished eating), and Chowder pretended he knew exactly nothing about what was going on.  When Nursey left, Dex scarfed down the last of his chicken Florentine.

Dex stood, thanked Bitty for dinner, and went to get his bag from the front hall so he could head up to his room to keep working.  Chowder must have timed his exit so he would be going upstairs just ahead of him.

‘You wanna work on the pset?’

‘Yeah.  Wanna put on a dry shirt first.’

‘I’ve got one you can borrow.’

‘It either won’t fit me or I’ll stretch it out.’

‘I have some that are big enough for you.’

‘Yeah, but so do I.’

Chowder looked a bit unsure of what to do as they reached the top of the stairs.

‘Chowder—why do you not want me to go into my room?’

‘Um.  What do you mean?’

‘Is this related to Nursey not wanting to be around me at dinner?  Did I fuck something up?’

‘Nnnnnno?  Why would you think that?’

It was almost impressive, at this point, that Chowder was still trying to keep his I-am-totally-innocent face up.

‘Cuz I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on.  And you’d have warned me already if something in the room got trashed.  And if it was an expensive thing, Nursey would have already thrown his money at the problem.  And said so.’

‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Okay.  So.  I’m going into my room, then.’

Chowder sighed.

‘I’ll be in my room.  Come find me.’

‘Sure.’

Dex walked into—unlocked and then walked into—his room.  It was weird that it was locked in the first place.  But other than that, nothing was destroyed.  His bunker appeared to be intact (a quick check of that confirmed it.  The lock was fine, too, even).  His plant was newly watered—Nursey or Chowder, unclear—and nothing appeared disturbed.  Although the floor was suspiciously lacking in floordrobe.  And there were no dishes of any sort lying around.

And there was a note on his desk with ‘Dexy’ in giant looping calligraphy cursive.  On Nursey’s nice paper.  Nothing else had been moved or touched on his desk.  Dex picked up the note and unfolded it—there were actually two sheets.

 

Dex,

 

So, I wrote you a thing.

This isn’t a confession, because I already did that and you didn’t believe me—I might have been drunk, and I might not have meant to open my dumb mouth, but I meant what I said.  Promise.

This isn’t an excuse, because you don’t believe in those.  And I didn’t do anything wrong here (well.  I did offer up one lie.  Sorry for that.  I was scared.).

Consider it an explanation.  But I didn’t have time to write out the full of everything while you were out this afternoon.  I hope you’re not freaking out too badly.  Strike that—I hope you’re not freaking out at all, but we both know you.  So, to quote one of your secret pop-punk bands, ‘I will speak in riddles so you can understand.’  I’ll wait until ten; if you haven’t shown up then or tell me to fuck off, I’ll sleep elsewhere and we can discuss the rooming complications.

‘That one’s dangerous (or could be, if I let him)’  
It’s funny, sometimes, how thoughts stick in memory.  
My usual response to intrusive questions  
Is either to evade or to tell a flat lie.  
So _of course_ I don’t remember my impressions  
Upon meeting you (and if you believe that… well).

Since then, I’ve come to know you better, maybe well.  
It mattered less, though, once you started dating _him_ —  
He must have made a rather better impression  
Than I did (that’s stuck in there with my memories).  
So back when we got asked, I told you both that lie.  
Hiding is much safer than answering questions.

I have to admit that I still have some questions,  
Because last year proved I _didn’t_ know you so well  
(That exchange toward the end hurt bad, not gonna lie—  
I’ll leave the rest, since it might be best to leave him  
And all the hurt he caused behind in memory)  
Still, I think there remain a few misimpressions.

So, I would like to correct that first impression:  
Revise your opinions and lead you to question  
Whatever of my faults live in your memory.  
To say that I want _us_ to get along as well—  
Even when we’re off the ice—as you did with him  
Is an understatement (just a bit), not a lie.

Perhaps it might be better to let this one lie.  
You’ve proven notably difficult to impress,  
And I don’t know how to say that _I_ am the ‘Him’  
You wear inside your sleeve.  Telling would raise questions,  
(Plus, it’s known I do not handle scrutiny well).  
I want our kiss to supplant his sour memory.

I’d rather not ambush you with that memory  
(A kiss that rendered a relationship a lie),  
So before I ask you to meet me by the Well,  
Where my lips might make a different impression,  
I need to make sure I leave you with no questions  
Remaining as to whether I would be your _Him._

(I’ve written this poem; might as well give it to _him_ —  
Face his questioning and for once tell him no lies  
I could impress on him the rest of that memory)

To be clear.  Um.  I’ll be at the Well.  Waiting.  Hope to see you.  But only if you want.

                                                                                                     Nursey

 

Dex read the note twice.  And then just read the poem again.  This was—.  Nursey knew what his halfmark was.  He had for a while.  And this was—a _lot_ of effort.  It took until the fourth read to really be sure that Nursey _probably_ wasn’t fucking with him.  Anything more than probably was too close to letting hope win. 

That way lay madness.

Dex walked into Chowder’s room through the bathroom and face-planted onto Chowder’s bed.  Fortunately, Chowder was at his desk.  And was apparently content to wait him out now that he’d discovered why everyone was so colossally fucking weird tonight.

‘Did _everyone_ at dinner know?’

‘They knew something was up with Nursey, that he was nervous.  That you’d been absent the entire day after bringing him breakfast.  Someone might have been aware of whatever went down last night that touched this all off.’

‘You don’t remember that?’

‘I don’t really remember getting to bed?  I know Caity marched me upstairs.  I have _zero_ recollection of you getting Nursey up here.  Assuming that’s what happened.  Did _you_ get drunk?’

‘Was I intensely hung over this morning?’

‘Hrm.  No.’

‘Yeah, so.  Nursey was his usual flirty, clingy, drunken self is all.  And was kinda awkward this morning until I said he probably didn’t realize it was me, whatever it was he didn’t really remember.  Said he always meant it.  And that.  I still don’t really believe it?  So rather than try to point out that he barely likes me as a friend—’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘—or otherwise get defensive or start a fight or something while he’s both hungover and denying it.  So I headed out to get some work done.’

‘And avoid the issue.  And Nursey moping most of the afternoon as he wrote frantically.  Well.  As he wrote frantically and took breaks to mope at me.  You, um, _do_ realize how nervous he is, right?’

‘Like, he was all kinds of twitchy at dinner, and kinda took off immediately after.  And—awwww, shit.’

‘Yup.  And you’re here.  On my bed.’  Chowder fixed him with a faceoff stare.  ‘Did he say how long he’d wait for you?’

Dex was already off the bed and striding through the bathroom.  He put on his scarf and coat, grabbed an umbrella, and then a second scarf.  Nursey had better have taken his damn jacket.  He vaguely heard Bitty call good luck or something similar at his back, like he’d known what was going on all along and continued his hands-off-until-victory-can-be-declared policy.  Dex realized he was still carrying Nursey’s note as he stepped off the porch, and hurriedly stuffed it into an interior pocket to make sure it wouldn’t get rained on.  Even at the price of getting rumpled.

It would’ve been nice if Bitty had told him.  Hell, since everyone else in the Haus seemed to know what was up, having fucking _anyone_ tell him woulda been nice.  Probably meant that Shitty and Lardo (and Jack, given the depths of Bitty’s discretion) knew.

Dex walked faster, angling his umbrella to adjust for the wind.

He wasn’t being fair.  Dex knew that.  Didn’t really care at the moment, since it wasn’t like he was gonna tell anyone this.  But he could definitely understand why Whiskey was avoiding the team in the aftermath of the sorority party.

The rain let up slightly as Dex got to campus proper.  He mentally catalogued the places near the Well that Nursey might take shelter from the rain.  Mostly there were trees, which would be minimally effective.  The buildings were all far enough removed from the Well itself that he didn’t think Nursey would take cover there in case Dex missed him.  If he was actually waiting for him.  If this wasn’t some kind of elaborate and deeply shitty prank (all signs pointed _away_ from that, but.  Even so.).

Dex broke into a jog.

Nursey was standing by the Well.  Well, like, half-lean, half-sitting on it.  Not really paying attention to his surroundings.  His beanie looked soaked through.  He had headphones on, Dex saw as he got closer, with the cord coming out of his jacket.  At least he had that on—he had to be fucking freezing though.  Nursey didn’t notice Dex until he was a few feet away.  He stood up, and a complicated series of expressions played over his face before settling on High Chill.

Goddammit.

‘Hey.’

‘Uh.  Hi.  You got my note?’

Nursey wouldn’t make eye contact with him, staring instead at his shoulder.  Collarbone, maybe.  As if eye contact were a display of aggression—as if Dex were a wild animal or a pokemon trainer.

‘Yes, dumbass.  And we’re gonna talk about that, but first.  Take this.’  Dex took off his scarf and wrapped it around Nursey’s neck.  He wanted to trail his fingers along Nursey’s neck as he did, but first they had to actually _talk_.  ‘Next we’re getting out of the rain.  That you’ve been, what, just standing out in for the last twenty or so minutes?’

‘Probably that long, yeah.’

‘And you’re pretending not to be freezing?’

Nursey gave a small nod.  Moving slowly, carefully, Dex took him carefully by the shoulders and steered him toward the nearest building with an awning to hide under.  Nursey moved not with resistance but with resignation—he had all the enthusiasm of a marionette with cut strings.

‘This better?  Or do we need to find somewhere inside and warm for you?  If all else fails we could go to a random dorm common room or something.  Study rooms in all the libraries are gonna be occupied.  And I’d kinda like to talk without an audience of our teammates, if that’s okay?’

Nursey, shivering against Dex’s side, just nodded.

‘Nodding is ambiguous, Nursey.  Here or inside somewhere?’

‘Here?’

‘You’ll tell me if you get too cold, though, right?’

Nursey nodded again.  That might be all he’d get from him.

‘If you’re gonna just let me down, then could you be an ass about it?  I think it’d hurt less that way.’

‘What the fuck, Nurse.  I’m not—ugh.  How am I the one that has to do the talking here?  Can I give you a hug?  It seems like a hug would be good.’

‘They’re always a Good.  And yes.  Please.’

Nursey didn’t wait for Dex to hug him before he slipped his arms inside Dex’s coat.  It seemed like he was trying to burrow in—and possibly intending to use his cast as a spade.  Somehow, even after almost half an hour in the cold, Nursey’s hands left trails of sparking warmth across Dex’s sides and back.

It was _intensely_ distracting.

‘So you wrote me a poem.’

‘Yeah?  Cuz it turns out you’re dangerous even when I shy away from it—when I try not to let you be.’

Dex tensed, then—for a split second all he could think of was where the camera might be and how the punchline would play out.  Nursey stilled, too, in response—huh.  Maybe it was okay?

‘I’m trying to be serious here, Nursey.  Please don’t fuck with me?’

‘M’not.  Promise.  Didn’t the poem make that clear?’

‘It made clear that you haven’t been forthright with how you feel about me.’  Dex paused.  At probably exactly the wrong place.  Fuck.  He took a shuddering breath and said, quietly, ‘not like I have much room to talk there.’

‘I have such a mad huge crush on you.  And I could never be sure if you were just ignoring the flirting or weren’t getting it.  We clear now?’

Dex leaned back against the building with just his shoulders so he wouldn’t squish Nursey’s arms.  He was still holding the umbrella, even though it wasn’t very necessary where they stood.  Nursey slumped over onto him, and he rubbed Dex’s back from inside his jacket.

‘Yeah.  Um.  Definitely the second one.  After all—why would you be flirting with me?  You’re so unfairly pretty it always seems like you could pull anyone you wanted.  Also, I spent almost a year thinking that you couldn’t be my soulmate because you lied about when you got your soulmark.’

‘Sorry.  I—got scared.’

‘That’s okay.  But you’re a dumbass.  Just so you know.’

‘So’re you.  Blind to my flirting at you—making it so I could _not_ , in fact, pull anyone I wanted.  Couldn’t even wheel a dude with a crush on me.’

‘So we’re on the same page here?’

‘Yeah, Dexy.  I really like you.  Wanna date you.’

‘Same.  But I want it to be clear that I want to date you because you’re _you_ , not cuz of the whole soulmate thing.  Would it be okay if we didn’t—’

‘As long as it’s not a complete prohibition on kissing.’

‘No.  Just.  Not the lips.  For the moment.  Um.’

Dex felt like he needed to properly articulate the nebulous justification, and words just _were not_ cooperating.  But he kept trying, to Nursey’s obvious amusement.  Eventually, Nursey put a hand on one cheek and pulled him in to kiss his other cheek.  Dex felt like he might combust from the surge of feelings that prompted.  He kissed Nursey’s nose in response, which earned him an undignified giggle.

‘We should probably get back to the Haus.  Chowder’s probably gone from ticked at us—at me, at least—to worried.  Also, you’re christly soaked, even with your jacket.’

‘Okay.  But cuddling once we’re home?’

‘Yeah.  That’d be nice.’

‘ _Chill_.’

‘You can’t say that with that amount of excitement.’

‘Can too.  Plus, it gives you something to grump at, and we all know you like that.’

‘Fair.’

It took some finesse for Dex to figure out how to walk back to the Haus when Nursey didn’t seem at all inclined to letting him go.  He eventually settled an arm around Nursey and let him figure out how to walk sideways.  Dex only had to stop him from tripping and falling twice.

They should have expected a welcoming party at the Haus.  Bitty had, in his usual improbable fashion, pulled together a pie in significantly less time than it ought to have taken.  Dex had only been gone a little over half an hour.  Bitty shouldn’t even have known what was up—unless Nursey or Chowder’d told him at any point.

The Sin Bin was sitting by the pie, along with a several page printout.

Bitty was grinning just sweet as syrup as he set some plates down at the table.  No one else was in the kitchen, which was itself weird when there were fresh baked goods.  Just Bitty, who had obviously been waiting.

‘You two get first crack at the pie—it’s chocolate and rhubarb.  And I used the good chocolate, Dex.’

‘But first you want to discuss the fines or something?’

‘Oh, something like that.  I didn’t want to upset the course of y’all’s relationship and letting you two finally decide things one way or the other, so I just kept a running tally.  I’m sure you’ll find it reasonable.’

Something curdled in Dex’s stomach.  Nursey, still limpeted to Dex’s side, was already reaching for his wallet.  Dex put a hand on his wrist—just gently—just enough to signal he shouldn’t.  Nursey shrugged, and Dex’s coat moved with him.

It wouldn’t be a big deal to Nursey, maybe.  But.

‘Bitty?  Are you seriously giving us a list of fines without ascertaining anything about our relationship?  Which we haven’t fully clarified, although we’re pretty on the same page about direction.  So.  Thanks there.’

‘I mighta overheard Nursey talking to Chowder about what to put in his poem—and a poem!  That’s so sweet.  Which is such a _refreshing_ change from how you two usually behave toward each other.’

‘That explains how you knew what was up, and how you assumed what might be going on.  Dooooooesn’t explain why the captain who declared himself immune from fines in his own home is gonna turn around and throw down a backlog of fines that could seriously fuck with at least _my_ budget—’

Nursey squeezed Dex, which interrupted his flow.  Bitty, now with his hand on his hip, took advantage of the opening.

‘I figured that Nursey would be willing and able to take care of most of the fines, since they’re mostly the results of his behavior.’

‘In the same way that you let Jack take care of your fines before you put yourself above the bylaws?  I _really_ hope you’re not suggesting that I’m trying to become, like, his kept man or some shit.’

‘William Jeremy Poinde—’

‘Please don’t shake the pie knife at my Dexy, Bits.  If you’re immune from relationship fines in the Haus, just, like, nix them from the list of possible fines.  You might get more people willing to come hang out if they didn’t have to risk a choice between behaving normally for their relationship or incurring penalties for doing so in the Haus.’

‘And we both live here, _Eric_.  So it’s not like we have a place we can go that’d be safe from fines and also our space.’

‘But the bylaws—’

‘Date to approximately the fall of 2011, when Shitty wrote them on a wall downstairs.  And have already been changed—by your say-so.’

As he said that, Nursey extricated himself from the interior of Dex’s coat, although he left one arm inside it, the hand on Dex’s back a reassuring pressure.

‘This feels like a mutiny.’  Bitty was pouting now. 

Dex very carefully did _not_ say anything about what brought about mutinies on actual ships.  Or what resulted from them.

‘Maybe put your captain hat aside for a sec, Bitty, and be happy for your friends?  I know your thesis is kinda all-consuming and largely outside your control.  So you might be feeling like you need to assert control in other parts of your life, but—we’ve got your back for that.  It’d be kinda nice if you had our back for this.’

Nursey pulled out a chair sat down, pulling Dex onto his lap as he did so.  This led to some difficulty, since Nursey was still partly in Dex’s coat.  Dex nearly fell onto the floor as they both tried to rebalance.

‘Hang on, Nurse.  Lemme get out of my coat.  Then we won’t either of us die.’

Dex shrugged out of his coat, blushing madly at Bitty’s giggling.  He stilled when Dex glared at him, and for a moment it looked like they were about to resume their standoff.  Then Bitty nodded and took the list of fines—a sheaf of paper that looked to have names and dates and behavior—and folded it unevenly before shoving it in his back pocket.

Dex nodded, a self-consciously superfluous gesture.  Then he slid the plates over to where he was seated, took the pie knife Bitty offered him, and cut three slices.  Bitty got a third plate and forks for each of them.

‘Damn, Bitty—this is delicious.’

‘The hardest part was deciding on the proportions between the rhubarb and the chocolate.’

‘So—not that this isn’t great, hanging out here, Bitty, but… would it be okay if we just took the plates upstairs?’

‘And maybe just absconded with the pie entirely?’

‘Oh, fine you two.  Get outta my kitchen.  We’ll figure out what to do with Bylaw Thirteen later, and I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.’

Dex made sure his back was to Bitty before he rolled his eyes.

Nursey smirked at him, then grabbed his hands and dragged him upstairs.

‘You promised me cuddles, and you _will_ deliver.’

* * *

They made it a whole damn week.  It was equal parts adorable and reassuring and torture.  Dex made damn sure that Nursey knew he was there because he liked _Nursey_ , and not cuz half of Nursey’s apparently intensely frustrating first thought of Dex lived on the right side of the redhead’s chest.  He felt a little bad about it—not that he’d either known or had much control over the thought in question—given the extent of Dex’s desires to _not_ be dangerous.

Nursey might have decided Dex’s left side was the better one to lie on, but he sure as hell wasn’t telling Dex that.  He had to maintain at least some minimal level of dignity, now that any pretense of Chill had evaporated between them.  Dex had mentioned that he hated it mostly because he took it as a signal that Nursey wasn’t happy or comfortable—or otherwise wanted to put distance between himself and the world (or just Dex).

Chowder had been ecstatic for them—and relieved that one of the biggest sources of tension in his life had resolved itself with only modest effort and meddling.  The rest of the team had kinda nodded and offered their congratulations and moved on—everyone seemed to have their own stuff they were paying more attention to.  Dex was _entirely_ fine with that.

Bitty had agreed that Bylaw Thirteen should be revised despite the hue and cry from Shitty and Holster in particular.  The fervency of the group chat’s focus on that topic kept Nursey and Dex mostly out of the spotlight.  Mostly.

Nursey had just gotten off the phone with Darlene when Dex got back from his work study.  He looked tired, but not unhappy, with his flannel sleeves rolled up and his hat on backwards.  Probably meant minimal phone calls today.  He dropped his bag on the floor by his desk and shucked his coat in the same motion, all before responding to Nursey making grabby hands at him.  Well, grabby hand—the cast kinda impeded the full gesture. 

Nursey found himself with a lap full of Dex—and, god, if _that_ wasn’t the best damn thing.  He groaned when Nursey kissed his collarbone and wrapped his arms around Nursey like he wanted to squeeze until they were no longer separate entities.

‘How was work, babe?’

‘Mmmm.  Good.  Jeannette just had me doing a bunch of data entry.  Kinda mindless, but she declared me useless for the week when I kept getting distracted during calls on Monday.  She didn’t ask about a relationship, but seemed like she was kinda assuming.  So no dealing with people on the phone today.  What’ve you been working on?’

‘Distracting myself from the two hundred pages of reading I need to finish by the end of the week.’  Nursey shrugged.  He’d get to it, but he kinda hated everything about his American lit class, from the overwhelming whiteness of the canon (aside from Fred Doug and assorted slave or slave-adjacent writings) to the general unbearableness of the Romantics.

‘No big deal there, huh?’

‘Eh.  I’ll get to it.  But right now I have this adorable dude on my lap.  And it’s a pretty, uh, major distraction.’

Dex shifted around, and suddenly he was straddling Nursey in his jeans that were a little tight across his ass.  He leaned down and kissed Nursey’s forehead.  Which was delightful, but entirely not what Nursey wanted just then.  He clasped his hands behind Dex’s back so Dex could lean back into them and they could look each other in the face—usually that was Dex’s move when he had Nursey in his lap but wanted to talk, but… turnabout.

‘Yeah?’

‘Um.  I—.’

Nursey stopped, and Dex waited for him.  As the silence wore on (as Nursey tried to figure out how to ask ‘can I kiss you?  On the lips?’ in a way that didn’t ignore the issue of their soulmarks—and especially not in a way that seemed like it was ignoring that in favor of how turned on Nursey was with Dex rocking on his lap), Dex’s brows knit in concern.

‘You okay, Derek?’

‘Yeah.  I just.  I wanted to make out with you.  But I don’t want to, like, rush you just cuz I’m horny and you’re beautiful?’

Dex blushed so readily.  It was great.

‘That sounds—yeah.  Thanks for asking.  Can we move off your chair, though?’

Dex ground down onto Nursey for a second before getting up and looking around as if to decide where they should move to.

‘I don’t know that we should both be getting up into my bunk.’

Dex rolled his eyes and offered Nursey a hand.  Nursey grabbed his forearm, and Dex pulled him up.

‘This is an invitation into the Fortress of Solitude.’

They both slipped off their shoes and crawled into the—surprisingly spacious—area below Nursey’s bunk.  It was so much homier than Nursey had realized.  It had curtains—Dex huffed when he complimented them—and Dex’s little spider plant that he took such assiduous care of.

As if to remind Nursey why they were on Dex’s bed, his boyfriend rolled on top of him.  It was a lot.  Nursey groaned, to Dex’s obvious delight.

‘Can I kiss you, Nursey?  You said you wanted to make out, but I gotta be sure.’

‘Yes, doofus.  Please?’

Dex grinned wickedly.

‘As you wish.’

Dex let his full weight settle on Nursey, and it was the best way to get squished.  He slipped one hand behind Nursey’s neck and pressed careful lips onto Nursey’s.  Nursey wrapped his arms around Dex and pulled him in insistently.  Dex kissed him with more confidence, and part of Nursey’s mind faded to static.  Time kinda dilated for a bit, and all he could pay attention to was Dex, and the planes of contact between them.

Then his arm—the unbroken one—started itching.

Logically, Nursey knew exactly what it was.  But he hadn’t expected it.  Either so soon—or on the other arm from where his halfmark had stood so long alone.  Above him, Dex gasped—surprise and hopefully pleasure—and _that_ was a noise he needed to draw out of him again sometime.

‘You feel it too?’

‘Y—yeah.’  Dex’s flush extended below his undershirt’s collar, now.

‘Can I see?’

‘Yeah.  You want me to take my shirt off?’

‘I want to take it off, yes.  Can I?’

‘ _Please_.’

Nursey slipped his hands beneath Dex’s undershirt, relishing in the shivers that sliding his hands along Dex’s flanks seemed to cause.  He pulled the undershirt and the flannel off in one move, trying his best to not have his cast rub harshly on Dex’s skin.  Dex laughed at him when the shirt nearly caught on his chin.  He sat up so he was kneeling between Nursey’s legs—forcing Nursey to sit up, too—and there it was, a continuation onto the left side of Dex’s chest in font that matched the half Nursey was familiar with:

**(or could be, if I let him).**

Nursey traced the new words with his fingers, and it seemed like Dex was having difficulty breathing.

‘You good, Dexy?’

‘Yeah.’  He smiled, and it was rare and bright and genuine.  ‘It’s just—a lot, you know?  Like.  I pretty much spent a couple years actively not wanting to meet my soulmate because I was afraid I’d hurt him or that he’d just, y’know.  Be afraid of me.’

‘Well, you can at least try to let that one go, at least some.  I’m certainly not that.’

‘Did you—’

‘Oh, shit—yeah.  Here.  Lemme.’  Dex laughed as Nursey tried to remove all parts of his shirt at once and got kinda tangled up in his haste.

‘You need some help there?’

‘No.  Just leave me to suffocate in my own shirt.’

‘Nah.  Can’t have that.’

Deft hands picked the cuff of his hoodie out of where it had gotten caught on his cast and slid that sleeve off.  Then nothing.  Like he wasn’t sure if Derek wanted him to take the rest off for him.

‘You can keep undressing me if you like, Dexy.’

‘Well, if you insist.’

Moments later, Derek, too, was shirtless and found himself under the full intensity of Dex’s scrutiny.  It was a _lot_.  Dex’s eyes darted toward Derek’s broken arm, and he looked disappointed, like a kid who knew he was gonna have his toy taken away.

‘I think that’s the wrong arm, Dex.’  Nursey glanced down at his arm and saw **how pretty he is.**   He’d never actually thought it would finish like that.  But it made sense.  Especially after Lardo talked to (at) him.

Dex strove for consistency.

‘You never told me you thought I was pretty, babe.’

‘Yeah.  Well.  Wanting what you can’t have hurts worse than just not having something.  I told a few other people, though.  In case you ever doubt it, though—it’s just right there.’

Then it was Dex’s turn to trace along the new lettering on Nursey’s bicep.

‘So you’re saying you _have_ me now?’

‘Nah.’  Dex was still _smiling_ , and Derek felt like he could just melt under the warmth of it.  ‘Can’t _have_ people.  But I have a relationship with you.  Like, a romantic one.  In case that wasn’t clear.’

‘Oh fairly.’

‘Good.  I can work with that.’

They went back to making out for a while.

‘I’m gonna need to send Ryan a picture.  Maybe ‘Leen, too.’

Dex had, at some point, rolled them over so they were side by side.  He’d also turned on the lights in his enclosure—soft track lighting all along the ‘ceiling’ that Nursey had never been aware of before, since the light didn’t spill out from any cracks.

‘What—you’re gonna send a shirtless selfie to your family now?’

‘Well, when you say it like that it’s weird.’

‘Isn’t it, at least a little?’

‘Nah.  It’s just family.  It’d be _weird_ if we posted one to the SMH groupchat.’

‘ _That_ would probably still merit a fine.’

‘Just one more reason to not.  Cuz it’d be weird, fine or no.’

Nursey laughed, and kissed Dex.  Mostly because he could, and because he was there.

‘Sit up and we can take the picture, Dexington.’

‘Sure.  But—’

Nursey was sitting up and situating himself behind Dex to get his exposed half—he was proooobably gonna still keep the unfairness under SoulDye for a while—of his completed mark into the photo.  Then Dex didn’t finish his sentence—sounded hesitant.

‘Yeah?  What’s up?’

‘When we’re alone, could you call me William?  We’re very not just teammates anymore, right?’

‘If that’s what you want, absolutely.  Just when we’re alone?  Are nicknames fine at other times?’

‘Yeah, and yes.  Just.  Never Billy, ok?’

‘What I’m hearing is that Billiam is one thousand percent on the table.’

‘It. Is. _Not_.’

Nursey cackled as he fished for his phone.  He kissed the back of Dex’s—William’s—neck, pulled the shirtless ginger back into his chest, and caught a good shot of the two of them from Dex’s chest up.  Nursey’s **how pretty** was just in the frame.  He showed it to Dex, who approved it.

‘Here.  Lemme text it to you, then you can send your thirst shot to your siblings.’

‘I hate you.’  He paused.  ‘That’s a lie.  I really, really don’t.’

‘I know.’

Dex sent the picture and then turned his phone to silent.

‘Expecting explosions?’

‘You’ve met my family.  There will be so much chirping.  Best to just let them get it all out of their system before I respond any further.  Even though I only sent it to two of them.  You know they’re gonna want you to come for Christmas if you don’t have other pressing plans.  Yeah?’

‘Is that something _you_ want?’

‘Hrm.  Lemme think.  Spending time with my boyfriend over Christmas with my overwhelming family—as opposed to spending time with my overwhelming family around Christmas _without_ my boyfriend.  Yes, dumbass.’

Nursey grinned.  He was sure it would be overwhelming, but he couldn’t fucking wait.  In the meantime, though.

‘So, before we get to that…’

‘Yeah?’

‘So, there’s a poetry night at this coffee shop—‘

‘Java House, right?’

‘—yeah.  I didn’t think you knew about that.’

‘I mean, it’s not like I’ve _been_ to it.  Bitty gets weird if we go to coffee shops that aren’t Annie’s.  For unknown reasons.  But I know that you’ve read at it.  Cuz you talk about it.  And I listen.’

Nursey couldn’t see it, but he _knew_ Dex was smirking.

‘Yeah, William?’

‘Yes.’

‘So maybe listen for a sec?’

‘As you wish.’

Dex was trying to kill him.  But if he pointed out that he got the reference, Dex might stop.  Nursey groaned and pulled Dex back to horizontal.

‘So.  Poetry?’

‘Yeah.  My comp class is having a reading there toward the end of the term.  And I was hoping that I could maybe read the poem I wrote you?  As one of the two for my turn?’

‘Yeah.  If I can title the one you wrote me.’

Nursey sighed.

‘I’ll make it good, I promise.’

‘You’ve got two weeks to figure it out.’

‘Sounds good.  And if you don’t like it, we can discuss further.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do fine.’

There was a thumping on their bedroom door, and Chowder shouted that they needed to finish up being gross and cute so they wouldn’t be late for team dinner.

‘Apparently we’re gross, hon.’

‘Because Chowder has any legs to stand on there.  He’s getting a serious fiscal benefit out of the rule change.’

Dex shrugged.

 

They didn’t actually get huge amounts of chirping from the current members of SMH.  Whiskey was still kinda avoiding Bitty, but he and Tango and Nik—their third soulmate, and the one Bitty had caught him with at the party—did at least come by the Haus to introduce Nik to folks who were around that afternoon.  He seemed like a good dude, to the degree that Nursey’s approval mattered.

Beyond that, life continued—they were having a good hockey season.  Nursey was writing poetry as he had the time and the inspiration (preferably simultaneously).  Dex had to disable the oven so Bitty might have even a vague chance to get some work done on his thesis.

They held a party for it.  Bitty was _not amused_.  Jack helped pay for the decorations.

This led, somehow, to Dex dragging Nursey into the student kitchens to bake.  He’d declared it was a date and apologized for it in the same breath.  Because apparently the SMH had collectively become dependent on baked goods.  Nursey had been just fine going along to hang out, and to ogle Dex while he was baking.  They were chatting about whatever as Dex was chopping up frozen rhubarb when Nursey got a string of texts from an unknown 207 number.  Maine.

Probably a Poindexter.

 **New contact:** So you’re coming for Christmas?  
**Me:** Yeah.  Assuming this is a Poindexter to whom I’m speaking.  Otherwise, I think I’ll have to miss this year.  
**New contact:** Good.  I’ve had to deal with years of pining, so you’d better be worth it.  And also make sure he knows you’re not, like, afraid of him or anything.

Nursey had Ryan’s contact info already, so that almost certainly meant it was a sister.  He’d only met Kelly, and this didn’t seem her style.

 **Me:** Yeah, that’s… been covered.  And can be gone back over as needed.  I feel like this is an attempt at a shovel talk?  
**New contact:** Not seriously.  I figure that you’ve probably heard all of that before, and probably don’t need to hear it again.  
**Me:** …but?  
**New contact:** Billy’s sensitive.  And cares so much more than he’s ever willing to let show.  
**New contact:** I guess I’m just hoping you’ve figured that out already?

Nursey showed his phone to Dex, who sighed.

‘I’m sorry about my sister.  She hasn’t even had to deal with that much pining.  I think she just feels like she gets to haze the newest soulmate cuz there was a full family meeting when she brought hers home.’

‘Which sister is it?’

‘Siobhan.  ‘Leen’s got more tact than that.’

‘That the one who drew the portrait you’ve got up inside your enclosure?’

‘Yeah—gave it to me hidden inside a gag gift for Christmas when I was in high school.  You should tell her I say that you know and that she can lay off already.  Or just not respond.  Your call.’

Nursey hummed in response and kissed Dex’s cheek.  He’d’ve gone for the back of his neck, but there was a Falcs hat in the way.  He saved Siobhan’s contact info into his phone.

 **Me:** Dexy says to lay off.  And that I know this already, yeah. 

Dex had made a tray of muffins out of frozen rhubarb he’d been chopping—he presented them to Nursey with just enough fanfare that Nursey figured they were a new-to-Dex recipe.  They shared them while waiting for the pies to finish.  Dex apologized that it wasn’t an ideal date night, but Nursey would have none of that.

After a great deal of complaining—and a small amount of negotiating with Jack—Dex connected Betsy II back up in anticipation of Hausgiving 2016.  Bitty had immediately commandeered the kitchen, for the most part.  Even after his “betrayal,” Dex was still the primary member of SMH the captain trusted with knives and fire, so Bitty didn’t really have any way of making his displeasure clear beyond sulking at him about it.

Nursey stayed at the Haus with Dex over Thanksgiving proper, and Dex cooked again.  Nothing extravagant, but it was damn tasty nevertheless.  And more or less within the bounds of their diet plans.  He let Nursey buy ingredients so he could claim to have contributed.

 

 **Me:** You’re good for next Thursday, right?  
**Him:** Still clear.  Still planning to swap shifts with Max at Alumni Relations.  You’re getting nervous, dumbass.  
**Me:** such flirting skillz  
**Him:** he says, having failed to convince me he was flirting with me for over a year.  
**Me:** Never gonna live that down, am I  
**Him:** No, but you wrote me a really sweet poem.  
**Me:** We’re up to two.  And that miiiiiiiight be why I’m nervous  
**Him:** Can I read it first?  Then no one has to worry about how anyone will react?  
**Me:** Sure.  When I get home?  
**Him:** That works.  There is, unless it’s, like, offensive, a minimal chance at best that you need to worry.  If that helps.  
**Me:** <3

 

Java Hut was crowded by the time Nursey got there.  Most of his comp class had congregated at two tables near the front.  The Waffles were there, too, for some reason—at a table with Tango and Nik.  Whiskey was not in evidence.  Nursey got himself some cider—still a couple months out from being able to order beer, at least officially—and got one for Dex, too.  He settled in at a small table off to one side and waited for Dex to arrive.

‘You got me a drink.’

‘You say that like it’s uncommon.’

‘Nah.  Just making observations.  Hi.’

Dex was just kinda awkwardly standing there, in his best jeans and a non-flannel button-down, like he wasn’t sure if Nursey was gonna stand up or if he should bend down to kiss him or what.  It was stupid—and it was even stupider that it was adorable.  Also, he looked a damn snack.  Nursey got up and reeled him in for a quick kiss that earned an entirely disproportionate wolf whistle from someone at the Waffles’ table.

‘You dressed up.’

‘You said it was, like, an _event_.’

Nursey shrugged.  There were still gaps between what each of them considered formal, and what an event's formality required.

‘You look really nice.’

Dex smiled, completely unguarded.  _God_ he wanted to kiss him—but it would probably leave Dex too exposed.  So Nursey took his hand as the MC took the stage; Dex squeezed it briefly.

‘When d’you read?’

‘Not ‘til midway through.’

‘So you get to tell me how good people are or aren’t and explain the poetry I don’t get to me?’

‘If you like.’

‘You are welcome to explain any of it to me, but I’ll keep a tally of what I think I get as opposed to what you decide I haven’t gotten.’

Nursey offered a running commentary—the schedule seemed to have worked out that about every third person was someone who wasn’t there for a poetry class.  Some of them were pretty bad, even taking into account the varying levels of comfort with performing, but most of the poets were at least passable.  Nursey tried to keep his commentary quiet—and felt rewarded when Dex scooted his chair closer and leaned up against Nursey to listen.

Nik stood up to wait beside the stage about half an hour in.  By then Whiskey had shown up at his and Tango’s table.  He strutted onto stage, wearing a t-shirt he’d clearly—to Nursey, at least—stolen from Tango.  It was snug through the shoulders and tight across his chest.  When he got to the microphone, the wrestler unfolded a heavily creased piece of paper.

‘I just want to say, before I begin, that I’m reading these because I lost a bet after I’d written them.’  Blushing furiously, he looked directly at his soulmates.  ‘It was worth it.’

With that, he shifted his posture, lowered the mic to nearer his mouth, and burst forth with a series of creatively descriptive and increasingly filthy limericks.  The audience seemed to appreciate them—and the audacity with which Nik delivered them.

Some sports bro once boasted for fun  
Of the shape and the size of his bum  
But check his posterior  
It’s clearly inferior  
Whereas hockey’s are second to none

‘Emily Dickinson called.  She wants her slant rhymes back.’

‘Whiskey, I think, is explaining that last one to Tango.  I’d bet they’re both regretting the stakes of whatever bet it was they had.’

‘I don’t think they regret it, given the dick jokes in this one.  I think they just regret trying to embarrass him through public performance.  How many more before you?’

‘I need to get up after Carl, there.’

Dex nodded and leaned further into his space, only shifting when Carl took the stage and Nursey poked him in the arm.

‘Fine.  Leave me for poetry.  I’d say to break a leg, but knowing you it’d end up with a hospital trip.  So if you break a leg, make sure it’s not yours.’

‘Thanks, babe.’

Nursey wasn’t nervous as he walked to the designated waiting table, a miniscule tall table right by the stage.  He pulled the printouts of his poems out of his pocket and smoothed them out.  He scanned through them one last time and then looked up to listen to Carl with at least half an ear.  And to look out at Dex, who was obviously more focused on Nursey than on Carl.  They smiled at each other, and Nursey could definitely understand why single people on a team might want to fine the shit out of new couples.

Then Carl was done, and Nursey walked up to the stage.

‘Hey folks.  I’ve got two poems tonight, both of which are at least partly my soulmate’s fault.  This first one a bit less so—I wrote it in a fit of pique at the generally awful set of tropes one can use to describe love.  It’s basically a complaint in the form of poetry.  It’s called Easy and Inapt Comparisons.’

I don’t love you like breathing  
How is breathing like love, anyway?  
Unconscious and yet subject to conscious control  
Sure.  Maybe.  But I didn’t decide one day to breathe  
I didn’t wake up one day and realize  
That I’d been breathing for _weeks_  
You only notice your breathing when something’s gone wrong  
Love.  Is.  Not.  Wrong.  How many times must I say it?

I don’t love you like a fish loves water  
The fish doesn’t know what it’s like to be on land  
To have to labor to move  
To strain to breathe  
_To not swim_  
The fish has no other point of comparison.  
So, no.  I don’t love you like a fish.

I don’t love you like fire  
Although you yourself are prone to that comparison  
Burning me, burning _up_ , burning bright—  
You—my darling—and Blake’s tiger  
(in the forests.  Of the night)  
Love, though, does not consume me or leave ashes in my mouth

Nursey might have chosen Dex as his audience member to make eye contact with.  When he wasn’t glancing down at the page to make sure he knew what words came next.  He got to watch Dex’s blush flood his face and disappear beneath his shirt’s collar.  He had the most wonderfully dopey grin.

My love is not as weapons, as battle, as war  
I declare it instead by peace  
By resolute silence, or support, or affirmation  
Whatever is needed, really  
We’ve had enough of (serious) conflict, you and I

He was pretty sure Dex snickered at that stanza, which was the hoped-for reaction.

My love is not a game  
I bring no competition to it  
Games are serious—well, those _we_ play are  
But they are mere trifles by comparison

My love is unlike art or poetry  
I plan those out too much  
With you, I think too hard—but act despite that

My love is not some fever or disease  
Just… for fuck’s sake.  Really?

I don’t love you like mere words, no.

The laugh line nearly eclipsed his conclusion, but Dex was nodding like he was savoring it—like it was better performed.  Declared.  Nursey waited for the snaps to die down before introducing the other one.

‘This one wasn’t for class.  It’s pretty personal—I got William’s permission to read it here tonight.  He said I could if I'd let him title it.  So.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slow burn achieved! With fluffy payoff and perhaps a bit too much poetry.
> 
> Thanks for reading, all of you who got to this point. Thanks especially to Den, Michael, and Adam for the beta work. Also Nik for letting me drop him into my stories over and over.
> 
> This is mostly RandomNoteForFutureReference's fault, at least in its impetus.

**Author's Note:**

> This monstrosity grew out of a tumblr ask from ForFutureReference with a set of three phrases (two of which are Nursey's lines, and one is worn by Dex's brother). Thanks to Adam for the beta.


End file.
